


In The Dark, I Could Hide

by Denzer



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Author's husband needs a drink..., Dark Rey (Star Wars), Dream sequence!, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Force Bond (Star Wars), I'm only here for the Reylo, Slow Burn, That's Not How The Force Works, The Author Regrets Everything, author needs a hug, drastic curve ball ahead, gross torture description coming up, look what I did to poor Ben, my first fanfiction, please be kind, these characters will not listen!, very dubious Force descriptions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:06:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 47,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23207440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Denzer/pseuds/Denzer
Summary: Set immediately Post-TLJ, Kylo Ren hunts an untrained and desperate Rey as she tries to sever the force bond. Unwittingly, she is pulling closer to the Dark Side in her attempts to escape him and he will do anything to warn her of the danger.
Relationships: Kylo Ren & Rey, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo
Comments: 240
Kudos: 210





	1. Tall, even on his knees

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfiction and I'm 30K in so far. I only discovered what fanfiction is this year, after seeing TROS, and I have gorged myself on it ever since. Seriously, I'm well past the realm of "enjoyable hobby" and treading in "unhealthy obsession" territory now. 
> 
> Below is my favourite scene, (I took the title from it), so you can see where you're headed...
> 
> “When I lived on Jakku, I was never afraid of the dark. It was the sun that could kill you.”  
> Her hand moves, covers his. His skin is warm. She feels the bones of his knuckles and soft dips between. The thrum of their energy turns gentle at their touch, like a sigh.  
> “The dark was quiet... peaceful.”  
> Now she is brave, now she is strong. In his eyes, she sees a different kind of battle is being waged. She cannot look away.  
> “There were things in the dark that could hurt me, many things that wanted to. But in the dark, I could hide from them. In the dark, I could be... safe. I never knew it was something to be feared, until you.”

Snoke is dead.

  
Ben Solo killed the twisted thing that had bridged their minds. The Force Bond should be dead too.

  
Yet Kylo Ren is still here, kneeling before her. Pain, grief, rage, a flicker of desperate hope that he is trying to tamp down. The tendrils of his scattered emotions are reaching for her, touching at Rey's skin like they could grab her and pull her to him.

  
There it is. That curl of something inside her that urgently wants to reach back, even now.

  
She presses the release for the landing ramp. The door closes and she uses the image to bolster her mind. _He is not here._ She wrenches hard. _I will not allow it._ His image wavers and he looks up at her.

_He is so tall, even on his knees._ Rey has stopped breathing.

She wills the door closed, shoves her mind hard against it.  
There is a reverberation. It swells between them and the bond pulses in her head. She cannot close it.

Rey has felt anger before. She felt it on Jakku as she fought to keep something she had found from marauding hands. She felt it during Unkar Plutt's indiscriminate punishments. She felt it as she fought Kylo Ren on Starkiller Base.

But there has been nothing like this. The sudden swirl of hot rage around her, inside her, makes her back straighten and her hands clench. It begs to be used.  
He draws in a breath. She hears it as if his mouth was right next to her and she lets fly this rage she has found.

There is a tearing and the ghost of pain in her mind... and then he is gone.

When she turns, Finn is waiting, but his face wavers. The walls around him are angling oddly.  
“Rey! You OK?”

He is holding her shoulders. Something warm runs from her nose over her top lip and then, somehow, she is looking at the ceiling. Finn is above her, panicked and calling to her, but she can't hear what he is saying. She can't hear anything. There is blackness swirling at the edges of her vision, her body shakes with it.

When she closes her eyes, she is afraid.  
There is a dark echo of that fear in the force around her. The echo feels familiar and she is strangely comforted in those last moments.

* * * * *

The bridge is quiet. Hux is on sleep cycle and the officers try their best to ignore him. Kylo stands silent and watches starlines. There is nothing for him but darkness since she ripped the slice of her light from his mind. Dark and pain. He can use the pain, it will fuel him.

_More._

It's not enough, so he lets himself think of her again. He remembers her face, the anger as she blocked him out. Anger he had put there. She had pulled the darkness from him, so much of it that he had felt light-headed. She siphoned it from the edges of his mind and drew it into her own body where it had threaded itself around her brightness. She had used it to break the tether and he felt the burst of pain in that corner of his mind that had once glimmered.

_I offered her the galaxy. I offered her everything I had.  
_

His lightsaber is in his hand. He doesn't remember calling it to him. The officers around him take subtle steps back. Behind him, two comms operators slip into the turbo-lift and he can feel their hearts pounding in the tips of his fingers.

_Kill them all._

But it won't be enough.

  
He turns to a Navigation officer.  
“How far until Naboo?”  
“About 3 cycles, Sir.”

His eyes trace from her face, down her body and back again. She follows the movement of his mask and stiffens. Her hair is dark but her eyes are a different colour and her skin has not known desert sun. He takes a step toward her and her back presses into her console. He can taste her fear.

_It's not enough._

“Summon the Knights,” he orders and turns on his heel. He needs to fight something that can fight back.

* * * * *

Leia's hand is over hers. There is heat in Rey's body, in her mind. She can smell something acrid and she clings to the calm reassurance of the General's hand, tries to open her eyes.

“Not yet. Rest,” Leia says softly, her mouth close to Rey's ear.

The heat in her body dwindles, trailing tendrils of pain under her skin. Then the pain is gone, and the world is quiet and peaceful and her closed lids are heavy again.  
It seems like hours later when she wakes. Leia is still there, asleep now, seated on an ornate, high-backed leather chair next to the bed Rey is lying in.

Above Rey's face, a medical readout displays green symbols she cannot read from this angle and a crisp white sheet covers her body. The room is bright, clinical white walls and squares of recessed equipment paneling. A window behind the general shows nothing but the pale blue sky of a thin atmosphere.

She feels rested. She tests her limbs slowly, tensing and stretching, and feels no pain.

Pushing back the medical display, she sits up gingerly, surprised to find no stiffness. How long has she been asleep? Where is Finn? Did they make it off Crait without being tracked? Did they survive? Where is he now?

“How do you feel?” Leia moves to the edge of her chair, her navy dress rustling.  
“Where are we?”  
“Cloud City. Not the safest place but good medical equipment and reserve ships, if you know the right people. Which I always do.”  
“What happened to me?”

Leia looks at her for a long moment, long enough for Rey to think she may not get an answer.

“You've never used the dark side of the force before. And you chose one hell of a way to start. You've been unconscious for ten days.”

There is a constriction in Rey's chest and she presses a hand to it. _Dark._

“It's OK. You used most of it. What remained inside you, I removed,” She leans forward and brings her fingers to the side of Rey's head, just behind her ear, tucking back a strand of hair.  
“Do you want to tell me what you used it for?”

Rey freezes, her own raised hand presses hard into her sternum. Leia lifts an eyebrow, almost imperceptibly smiles.

“I was thinking that... you helped us jump to lightspeed before we left the atmosphere, maybe you cloaked the Falcon from the First Order's ships?”  
Rey swallows.

After a long moment of silence, Leia looks away and sighs sadly.  
“You have so much light in you. I had hoped...”

When she looks back, it is with a General's hard-eyed assessment.  
“I had hoped to train you in its use. I cannot claim to have the answers to all your questions but, you need a teacher... and I'm all you've got.”

Rey feels her bones harden. She is cold. It has been so long since she felt warm.  
“When can we start?”

* * * * *

“It seems you are missing some members.”

Kylo Ren speaks into the silent hall. At the sound of his mask-modulated voice, there is a subtle shifting in seats, a ratcheting up of tension that had laced the air since his trooper-heralded entrance to the sacred Republic Hall.

He expected some of the senators to stay away, to hide like the cowards they are, but thirty percent? Where was their will to protect their precious people now?  
He takes a slow breath, lets the emotion settle into him and then draws the air from the vast space before him. Eyes bulge, hands reach up to grip their own throats, fear shimmers around him until he lets go and tilts his head to the side. He waits until he has their full attention again.

“We will convene again at sundown. Those not present then will be hunted and executed.”

The murmured cries of dismay reach him as he leaves the hall, flanked on all sides by the Hux's heavily armoured stormtroopers.

The man himself is waiting on board the Betrayal, the newest flagship Ren had named while looking directly into Hux's eyes.  
“Sir, your Knights have arrived,” his lips curl in disgust.  
“Tell them to meet me in the training room,” Ren does not stop walking as he addresses him, “and get me the names and jurisdictions of the senators who failed to appear today. We will need to make an example, tonight. Ready an execution squad.”

He does not wait to hear Hux's response.

The training room is dark. The knights are already sparring, using training staffs and heavy, metal rods to represent their weapons. Sorrin and Ta'Kar face off in the middle of the room and there is a plum-coloured streak across Sorrin's over-muscled, green arm, where his brother has already made contact. They stop when Kylo enters and he hastily shrugs off his jacket, strips to the waist without acknowledging them.

He catches their heads moving, a look passing between them, and he lights his saber and faces them. Training gear is not enough.

More.

“Live weapons,” he says and calls to them, pointing with the tip of his saber, “Imeia, Artane.”

Imeia's face is calm as she pushes Sorrin aside and takes his spot at the centre of the room but Artane is already grinning and gliding the back of a laser-scythe from behind his thin shoulders.  
Ta'Kar moves to the side, rests his back against the wall to watch and nudges Imeia with a gentle sweep of his force energy against hers. The gesture is so soft it makes Kylo want to look away. She ignores the intrusion and focuses intently on her Master.

Kylo points the saber at the space between them and then runs. He is a swirl of motion as he fights. He blocks the laser-scythe with a force push that knocks Artane back against the wall and sweeps along Imeia's blade, twisting behind her until the clash is at her throat. She dips forward and rotates his body over hers, pushing him to extend his fall.  
He lands hard and rolls to his feet, bending back to avoid connecting with the scythe that Artane has fired at him from across the room. He ducks again as it is called back, narrowly missing his head, and blocks the hard downward swing of the Imeia's deep purple saber.

They dance around him. He parries, blocks, rushes toward any potential target. There is nothing but the sound of harsh breath, the screech of unstable saber fire through metal and against the razor edge of the scythe. He senses their movements before he sees them, as they do his.

It is intimate.

At the edge of his focus, he sees Imeia is tiring. He is pushing her too hard. He shoves her high into the air, away from him, where she coils and lands gracefully on her feet. But she runs to engage him again. She feigns left and then drives her saber to his right, catching his forearm. She gives him a tight-lipped smile when he reaches out with the force and pulls her into his outstretched fist. All trace of her exhaustion is gone. _Clever thing._

He steps back and drags her into the spot he'd been standing in a second earlier. The scythe, meant for him, stops a few inches from the top of her head, his hand straining with the effort of keeping its momentum held. She looks up and rolls her eyes, then slinks to the side of the room with a thunderous glare.  
Kylo grabs the laser-scythe from the air and lets is fly back to its owner. His muscles are screaming. Sweat is stinging his eyes. It's still not enough.

_More._

He points at Sorrin, who bounds into the session and immediately lands a punch to Kylo's jaw that sends a spray of blood through the air. Kylo staggers back and swipes at his mouth with the back of his hand, thins his lips in a hint of a smile. He nods at Ta'Kar and the three knights gather around him.

Kylo takes a moment, assessing the possible forms, paths they will take to him. Sorrin swipes across his back with the heaviest weapon he trains with, an oversized blaster-axe he scavenged from Moraband. The hit grazes under Kylo's rib, pushing him forward toward Ta'Kar's raised saber. He spins and drops to the ground, stabbing upwards so the point of his lightsaber is at Ta'Kar's unprotected chest, hovering. Ta'Kar raises his hands and steps back with an easy grin.

The axe comes down hard again on Kylo's left side. He barely has time to roll out of its way. The tip of the weapon cuts a thin slice through Kylo's outstretched thigh and Corrin mutters a curse as Kylo's force-punch knocks flat on his back.

Artane is quietly circling him. A set of daggers gleaming in belts that cross his chest. Kylo spins his blade and then lowers it so it's held loosely at his side. He closes his eyes.  
Nine knives fly in quick succession. Kylo uses the lightsaber to deflect them, one after the other.

He stops cold.

A looping, ethereal tug at the back of his mind, a sputter of searing light that blasts and then softens in a split second. The bond, it is open again. He turns his head toward her.

Across the room, behind the Knights, she is fighting something he cannot see, with a staff. No lightsaber.  
As she comes into focus she drops the staff and grips her head, ducking to a crouch. Then, she is gone.

The tenth knife nicks the ridge of muscle above his heart, held from cutting deeper still by Artane's considerable force. Kylo plucks it from his skin, turns it over in the palm of his hand, looking at it as if he could melt it with the heat of his anger.  
No one has spoken and the room has stilled around him. He walks to Artane, hands him back his dagger and grips his shoulder hard.  
“Well done,” he says and turns to the three knights, lined along the opposite wall, “Two days of training, morning and evening. Then, you will each be given assigned sectors in the Outer Rim. You will bring them into line while I pull the old Republic under my control.”

Sorrin's eyes drop to the cut in his Master's chest.  
“Politics does not agree with you, Kylo.”

Kylo tilts his head and regards Sorrin for a moment before striding across the mats to stand in front of him. Sorrin is the weakest force user of the group, barely able to pull a lightsaber to him, a fact he makes up for by being overly large in every other aspect. Kylo is only slightly taller, but the strength of his force energy draws him up until he feels like he is looming over the Knight.

“Politics is faster, my friend. I have a different mission for you. There is a scavenger girl with the Resistance. She is strong with the Force. You will find their new base and bring her to me, alive. And unharmed, understood?”

“And the Resistance?”

Kylo smirks, “You will have your hands full with the girl. She is enough.”

Sorrin nods and Kylo spins away, bending to lift his jacket from the floor before heading to his quarters.

Imeia sidles closer to Ta'Kar.  
“Did you feel that? When he lost concentration?”

Sorrin turned toward her, “Even I felt that.”

“What was it?”

Ta'Kar's eyes stayed focused on the door that had closed on his Master's bloodied back,

  
“Trouble.”


	2. The Swell of Something, Blooming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little more butchering of a beloved franchise...

Pain radiates beneath her ribs and she runs a hand across her back, pulls it before her face, expecting blood. But her hand is clean and the pain has disappeared.

The training droid clips her shoulder with a shark crack.

“Focus, Rey!” Leia calls from her seat, looking up only briefly from the datapad Poe is pointing to.

Rey lashes out with the training saber, leaving her side unguarded. The droid lands a blow to her ribs. Her breath leaves her and she cannot pull it back in.

Poe stops the droid with a sharp command.

Rey forces herself to stand. Her breath will come when it comes. She does not have time to be injured.

“Commence.”

She chokes the word out and the droid immediately cracks it's training rod her across the cheek. Frustrated, Rey drops her weapon and pulls her staff to her from across the room, cleaves the droid with a long sweep.

Another droid appears to her left.

“That's enough for today,” Leia calls softly but Rey's cheek is burning and she cannot hear the command.

She cannot bring her body into line. The short, thin rods feel alien and awkward in her hands. She has to use the force to compel them to do as she wishes. Her wrists ache, her mind is exhausted. She is frustrated and defeated and there is a curl of anger licking at the inside of her mouth. It makes her yell.

She sends the droid crashing into the wall, drives forward to meet two more. The staff twirls before her, like a shield. She force-shoves the smaller bot away, focusing on the bigger, bulkier droid. It is black and gold and it does not rush toward her. Instead, it seems to grow bigger.

There is a sharp pain in her thigh. It distracts her enough that she has to duck to avoid a blow from the expanding droid. She lashes out, another yell rushing from her burning lungs. She twirls and raises her staff high, uses it for balance to kick out. Her breath is on fire.

There is a shape in the corner of her eye. She sees him before she feels him. Then, with a pull that drags her to the ground, he is in her head. Confusion, pain, hunger like she has never felt, even half-starved on Jakku. He is everywhere inside her, crackling like the lightsaber he spins before his bare chest.

The staff falls from her fingers and she covers her temples with her palms.

Poe runs to her and drops to a crouch, gripping her shoulders. She can feel his fingers digging into her rigid shoulders but she cannot open her eyes. Her lids squeeze so hard together that they hurt.

_Ocean. Island. Rock. Wall._

She repeats it, not sure if she is speaking aloud or just shouting it in her head, fighting to raise a barrier around her mind, to push him out.

The wall is solid. The wall will protect her.

When she opens her eyes, there is a deep groove between Poe's brows. His eyes are brown.

She flinches, tries to stand but moves too fast and stumbles forward into him. Then she is looking at the hem of Leia's dress where it skims the white floor.

“We need a Med droid in training room four.” her voice is steady, somewhat sardonic, and it's the last thing Rey hears before the world shifts and fades.

*

It's never dark in Cloud City, but when Rey wakes the sky outside the window is tinged pink. Time has passed.

Finn's face comes into view suddenly, his eyes wide with relief.

“You're awake.”

“How long?” she croaks, and he reaches for a thin vial of water. He helps her to sit and brings the vial to her lips.

“Four hours. What happened?”

Rey drinks, tilting her face away but not breaking eye contact. She takes long sloops of water and the seconds tick by as she drinks.

“She overdid it, is all, Finn. Learning to control the Force is not something you can rush.”

Rey swallows the water and looks at her lap. Her hands are bruised, there is a soft ache in her ribs and a hint of pain across her cheekbone. Bacta packs are lined up on the table beside her bed.

“I'm sorry. I'm trying.”

“Finn, I'd like a moment with Rey.”

He nods, obviously reluctant, but walks to the door.

“I'll be back after drills,” he tells her. The door hisses shut behind him and Rey finds she does not want to lift her head to look at Leia.

“Do you know why I am training you?”

“Because I'm the last Jedi?”

Leia smiles, almost laughs.

“That's true. A bright symbol of hope... Rey...” Leia has stopped smiling. She is looking at the ground and Rey feels something tug inside her chest. Whatever Leia says next will hurt.

The door hisses open and Poe strides in, a datapad in his hand and a look of alarm that has Leia rising to her feet.

“Two of our informants have confirmed it. Ren's taken out a third of the Senators on Naboo. The First Order has control of the Old Senate. He's _reinstated_ it... under his own command. Hey Rey, you better?”

He doesn't wait to hear her answer. Leia nods and places a hand on Poe's arm. He turns to her, slips an arm under hers and walks with her to the door. As it opens, Leia stops and turns back to look at Rey.

“Two days rest. Meditation only. Understood?”

There is a spike of frustration in her stomach but Rey buries it and gives the General a sharp nod of assent.

*

Two days.

She should be training.

The first day passes in a slow haze of books she cannot understand and walks where people steal surreptitious looks at her when they think she can't see them. She avoids meditation. There is a porous feel to her wall, a softness that wasn't there before and she is afraid that opening her mind will weaken it further.

The bond is still there, humming in the back of her head, but she can't feel him anymore.

She sleeps and dreams in endless loops of clashing sabers and red, swirling light.

She wakes in the early hours and her thoughts tumble over each other. Kylo Ren has ten years of real-world practice. He is a Master.

If her training continues at this slow pace he will tear through what's left of the Resistance before she can hold a lightsaber without looking like a child playing.

Her thoughts are so dark she is afraid of them. She rolls out of her too-soft bed and walks across the bare room to stare out at the endless sky. Somehow it reminds her of the desert seas on Jakku. Perpetual nothingness that could kill you if you didn't learn how to protect yourself, fast.

With a sigh, she slumps into the meditation area in the corner of her room.

_Ocean. Island. Rock. Wall._

_The wall is solid. The wall will hold._

She lets her mind drift in the confines of the barrier she's created. The force ebbs in and out, a gentle curling of power. She reaches out timidly. The wall will protect her.

She feels Leia strongest of all, close and calm. There are people all around her. There is fear and courage, deep grief and love. She pauses and smiles. Rose is with Finn, a swell of something blooming and an ache that makes her pull away, snap back into herself.

She pushes out again, stronger this time, away from this city in the clouds.

Within a breath, he is there. Like he's been waiting.

Her eyes snap open and he is seated before her, legs crossed, mirroring her position but his eyes are on her. They widen.

Rey's mouth drops open and she presses back against the wall behind her.

_Ocean... Island... Rock..._

“Wait!” his hand jerks, long fingers overlapping around her wrist. He's not wearing gloves.

The bond distorts, twists and pulls to open itself further.

Both their bodies tense with the strain of Rey driving it back.

_Wall!_

He pushes hard, shoves himself against the barrier she is trying to bring down around him. Her fear is everywhere. It feels like the interrogation room and she fights him as she did then. The swirl of his force energy crawls up her arm. Strenght. Power.

His voice is laboured, tight in her mind.

_Rey. Stop. This is killing you._

She screams.

_WALL!_

Blood pours from Rey's nose. It gushes into her lap. Flecks of it spatter his forearms. She looks up, meets his eyes for a split second that seems to last an age. He inhales, sharp and fast.

Rey falls, forward, toward him. His hands move instinctively, as if to catch her, and her wrist burns cold where he had held it. Without physical touch, his image blinks out like a light.

She hits the floor face first and she is gone too.

*


	3. Kylo's Answer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first part of this chapter was actually the last part of chapter 2 but I messed the upload up somehow - Apologies, I am super new.

In the refresher, Kylo watches the swirl of her blood mix with the water. His head aches. He'd been out cold for nearly an hour this time.

She was pulling too much from him, trying to break something that would only grow again. Who was training her? Could they not see what was happening? Warn her!

He punches the wall and cracks the black tile. His own blood runs from his knuckles to meet hers in the whirling water at his feet.

Sorrin will not find her fast enough.

Rey will drown herself in power she cannot control before the knight finds brings her back to him.

Yet, he cannot leave now, not when Hux watches his every move and the Republic Senate whispers mutiny at every turn. The galaxy needs a leader, a strong one. Without a show of force, the criminal gangs that dominate the Outer Rim will spread inwards. There will be chaos if he does not focus now.

He has done this. No-one can fix it but him.

He pushes at the thought, probing it like a wound. Somehow, without Snoke in his head, his own knowledge and judgement feel wild, uncontrolled. The sudden freedom is a high from which he might fall at any minute. Is that why he wants her to join him? Another voice in his head. He should want her dead, to avoid the torment he's lived with all his life.

But he doesn't want her dead.

He'd thought he wanted her to turn. He'd not asked it of her, exactly, but he supposed that is what she thought, in Snoke's throne room. Turn away from the Light, join him in the Dark. And she'd said no.

But now she was using it. Pulling darkness to her to try to close the connection between them. He'd seen it curling into her, joining a tinge of grey that had centred itself at the core of her Light. Unknowing. Unprotected. Desperate.

His bloodied fist meets the wall again.

In the swell of pain that burns there, he finds an answer.

The Resistance. She will do anything for her friends. It's not what he wants, but if he waits any longer she'll be lost.

He turns the water off and feels the tendril of that familiar warmth in his mind. The bond is stronger each time it rebuilds itself. He can't see her but he can feel her curling, frayed thoughts. She is still unconscious.

He sighs and starts to construct a container over the corner of his mind where the pull of her light resides. He might not be able to cut the connection, but he can ease the feel of himself in her mind.

It might buy him the time he needs.

*

There is a vibration under her. A shuttle powering up. Not the Falcon, she would know that anywhere.

“The Knights are hunting us. We can't wait, Finn. There's no time.” Leia's voice is strained.

“We need to find what's causing these blackouts. Fix whatever is wrong with her.”

“Rey will come back to us when she's ready.”

“It's been two weeks!”

She moves her hand, thinks she's lifted it clear of the bed but only one of her fingers doesn't have the burr of a blanket beneath it now.

“She's waking up. Finn, give her space.”

It takes time for Rey to open her eyes. They feel gritty when she finally blinks them open. Leia is holding the hand she had tried to move. She barely feels the touch. She checks for Finn but they are alone in the small grey room, crates stacked high against all four walls.

“Was he telling the truth about closing the bond?”

She has spoken before her mind has caught up with her, with where she is, what has happened. With what Leia knows and what she doesn't. But it's too late now.

“Is keeping it closed killing me?”

Leia lifts Rey's hand to her mouth. She presses against the straight line of her lips and Rey can feel the tremble beneath. Leia nods so shallow that Rey can only feel the movement.

“In a way.”

Tears track from the corners of Rey's eyes, across her temples and into her hair.

“What do I do?”

Leia smiles and her expression is so filled with sadness that the tears run in rivulets over Rey's skin.

“You rest,” Leia tells her.

* 

There is something they are not telling her.

She's known they are keeping something secret, for days, since they arrived in Passana. When she tried to enter the command tent to help set up, Poe had stopped her with a weak excuse about focusing on training. She'd looked to Leia then, and was met with a blank expression that reminded Rey of another face that could easily hide any trace of emotion.

The camp is tense, running on adrenaline and tremulous hope. People watch her as she trains and it makes her movements awkward and overly aggressive.

The bond is still there. It's a vague threat at the back of her mind and she is constantly vigilant against it.

Trying to break it might kill her but she cannot live like this either.

On her third night in camp, she feels it open in her sleep. She has been dreaming but her mind jolts awake at the sudden vortex that is at once familiar and frightening.

She sits up fast, curls her knees into her chest. The desert nights are hot and she is wearing too little.

He is sitting, reading a book, a paper one, like her Jedi texts. He does not look up, though she knows he can sense her. There are dark circles under his eyes, hollowed like he has not slept in weeks. She can feel an anxious thrum pulsing from him.

Minutes pass and he does not move, his eyes do not leave the page but he does not turn it either. This would be easier if he was wearing the mask, if she couldn't see his face.

She slips her hand under her pillow and wraps her fingers around her saber's hilt. She cannot live like this. It has to end.

She pushes back the sheet, swings her legs to the floor. The slip she is wearing barely reaches her thighs but she fights the urge to cover herself.

Kylo looks up at her movement and freezes.

Her fingers tighten on the hilt she holds flush with her spine and she takes a step toward him.

This is wrong.

He is frowning at her. His breath is shallow. His shoulders rise and drop in tense tugs and a muscle in his jaw is working.

Her legs carry her forward until she is in front of him and, still, he has not moved. His eyes are unfocused now, his pupils wide. The bond is thrumming between them. She can sense the turmoil surging, a strange kind of sadness, and something else he is trying to hide from her. Does he know what she is about to do?

This is so wrong but she cannot stop now.

She touches his cheek with her fingertips, cementing him there with her, and brings the hilt of her lightsaber beneath his chin. Her finger hovers over the button that will ignite it.

His long breath is steady, almost a sigh, but he grips the book tighter and the tendons in his knuckles ridge his skin.

“Will the force-bond break if I kill you?” Rey doesn't recognise her own voice.

He blinks rapidly, but his reply is calm, measured, “I don't know.”

“If I kill you like this, when we're connected, will I die too?”

His chin tilts and his frown deepens. Rey adjusts her grip on the saber.

“I don't know.”

Her breath is hitching at the base of her throat. _This is all wrong._

“Is there a way... to make this stop?”

He stands, slowly.

She tracks with his movement, her fingers pressed to his cheek so the bond won't blink out. He is so tall that she has to reach high to keep contact and he dips his head, obliging.

He is not afraid. She tries not to focus on what she feels from him, but she knows it is not fear. It's more like curiosity. But not quite.

_Wrong, wrong, wrong._

He is too close but she can't move back without pulling the lightsaber from his throat. His eyes are too dark, searching her face too intently.

“You're strong, Rey, but neither of us is stronger than the Force. It's connecting us for a reason.”

She cannot look away.

“What reason?” She had meant to sound derisive but it came out frightened, confused.

He raises his hand and places it over hers, on the saber.

For a brief moment, she sees herself lighting it, hears the sound it would make as it opened his skull. She cannot live like this, with this darkness, his constant presence in her mind.

But then his hand moves, a gentle but insistent pull. She lets him remove the hilt from his neck. He holds her hand to the side, pointing the lightsaber away from them. His skin is warm over hers, calloused in the places where a saber would sit but also soft, in parts. Her plan has failed but she does not know why.

Now his breath is unsteady, when the danger has already passed. A small muscle beneath his eye moves.

“You know the reason. You know.”

She lifts her fingertips from his face, feels the connection closing around them. He won't stop looking at her and she still cannot look away. His fingers press around her hand and then he lets her go.

She takes a breath as if to call after him but he is gone before she can speak and she does not know what she would have said anyway.

She ignites her lightsaber, stares at the desk full of books she cannot read, texts that give her no answer, even in translation. She wants to hit something. To destroy something. To make something hurt.

It's a residue of him, how he feels. Rey knows this. This is not her.

He has infected her.

She is exhausted but afraid to go back to sleep. Instead, she dresses quickly and leaves for the training room. She will use this feeling.

At breakfast, Finn and Poe don't beckon her to sit with them. She feels a flare of something like hurt and makes a beeline for them, slams her tray down and glares as she sits.

“How was training?” They both ask the question at the same time, then look at each other.

“Brilliant. I used the Force to decimate the First Order in its entirety. You can both take a break.”

“Did she make a joke?” Poe stage-whispers to Finn

“I don't know. She looks pretty mad. I can't tell.”

Rey's shoulders loosen at their tone and she stretches out her weight-bearing arm to rid herself of the sting that the hours swinging a lightsaber had created, and to punch Finn's shoulder.

“Hey!” he says as his drink spills.

Proximity alarms blast over their conversation.

Rey rises to her feet and jumps the table, pushing past other Resistance members to race after Finn and Poe to the command centre.

Leia is focused, directing fighters to cover escape shuttles. She pauses when she sees Rey.

“Do you feel that?”

Rey considers for a moment, tilts her head to the side like she's seen Leia do, but she doesn't reach out and test the web of the force around her. She is afraid of what will happen if she does.

“I'm not sure.”

“There's a force-user on that ship. Not strong, but there. I think it's Sorrin.”

Rey looks blank.

“A Knight of Ren.”

Rey looks terrified.

Finn grabs her shoulder, “Help me with these!” He piles a stack of datapads into her arms and she runs after him.

“What are we doing?” she calls at his back as she races to keep up with him.

“We're running. If there's a Knight on that ship, then the First Order destroyers will be close behind him. Time to go.”

“How did they find us?”

“We'll figure that out later.”

She follows him to the hangars where the evacuation is already in full swing. Poe's squadron is in the air, protecting the first of the shuttles to leave the ground.

Rey stops running.

She twists in place, datapads held tight against her chest.

“What are you doing?”

Finn is calling from the ramp of the nearest shuttle.

“Where's Chewie?” she asks him, neck strained to see beyond the mass of people to the edges of the hangar. She has not seen Chewie in the three days they've been on Passana.

Finn's face falls.

“Rey... get on board. We have to go.”

Someone brushes past her, a droid hits against her leg as it races by, people all around her are running, shouting to each other, but Rey is standing still. Her legs won't move.

“Where is Chewie?”

Finn leaves the ship, walks toward her, solemn and careful. He puts his hands on her shoulders.

“I'll tell you when you get on board. Come on.”

“Tell me, now.”

Finn shakes his head in frustration.

“The First Order captured his shuttle in transit from Cloud City. We know he's alive. He's being held on the Betrayal, Ren's ship. Now, _move_. Rey, we need a pilot.”

Tense faces are looking at her from the opening of the shuttle. Beyond the hanger doors, three ships arc across the skyline. Two TIE's and an X-Wing, blasts of laser fire between them. They are already too late.

There, beyond the fighting, swooping above the horizon, is a winged ship she recognises.

He is here. He is here now and she has to fight. She's not ready.

“Get Connix!” she yells at Finn as she shoves the datapads at him and races to the mouth of the hangar, pulling her lightsaber from her belt. The Tie's overhead fire a line behind her, closing her off from the hangar as two more shuttles blast through the flames and into the air.

His ship lands. The bay door's open with a hiss and she circles the ship, saber lit.

She can't do this.

There is a figure standing at the top of the ramp. He's dressed in black but his tunic is sleeveless and the skin of his heavy shoulders is green. His helmet has thick, sharp studs in two lines that run from the visor to the back. He holds a massive weapon by his side, a blade that holds her gaze. He raises it to his shoulders and the flat edge thuds against muscle.

“Rey!” Finn roars her name. The shuttle has breached the firewall and waits for her, bay doors open.

The Knight of Ren jumps forward, battle distance.

“Come with me,” he says and holds out his free hand, “I'll take you to him.”

Rey swings her lightsaber and the outstretched arm retreats. The knight gestured beyond her, to where the Resistance shuttle waits.

“I'm not here for them. But the longer you wait, the more of them die to protect you.”

Rey looks up, above her Tie Fighters and X-wings are screaming fire across the sky. Behind her, the hanger is in flames. She takes a step back from the knight, lowers her sword a fraction.

“You'll leave if I come with you?”

The knight points at her, inclining his massive helmet.

“He just wants you. The Resistance is dead anyway.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Her hand reaches out and the blast of angry power she releases throws him back into his ship. He slams into a bulkhead and falls hard. 

Rey takes off running. The shuttle has lifted off the ground and she jumps for it, an impossible height that Finn knows she can make. He catches her arm, pulls her inside, then runs to the cockpit.

“Punch it!” he yells at Connix and she gives the command over the comm. The jump to hyperspeed knocks Rey back against the wall.

“Where are we going?”

“Endor.” Connix tells her, “We're running out of places to hide.”


	4. Only Hope

“Why didn't you tell me?”

She is yelling. Poe and Finn stiffen beside her. Their disapproval is palpable but Rey cannot control her voice.

“Why didn't you tell me they'd taken Chewie?”

“Easy, Rey,” Poe has turned to her, shock and unease in his expression. He wishes he had not brought her to the control room, she can sense it from him as if he'd spoken aloud.

Leia raises a hand to quieten the room. A breeze moves through the wooden slats of the tree they'd made their base in.

She holds out a datapad. Rey takes it and reads quickly. It's enough to quieten her.

“He wants to trade Chewie for me. That's why you didn't tell me. You thought I'd do it.”

Leia raises an eyebrow, “I know you would have.”

Rey sighs and when she does, all the fight goes with it.

“How do we get him back?”

“We'll find a way.”

“This says they'll execute him if you don't present me. Three days from now.”

It's Leia's turn to sigh, “I know.”

But Rey's sense in the force is stronger now. She can feel it, even in Leia.

“You don't have a plan, do you?”

Poe steps forward, grasping her arm, “We're working on it, Rey.”

She pulls her arm away, runs from the room to the wooden balcony outside. She jumps the wooden fencing, falls down, down, down and lands in a crouch at the base of the tree.

Once she starts running, she can't stop. She doesn't know this world but she smashes through the undergrowth of deep forests, vaults ravines and rivers, charging until her legs ache. Eventually, she meets a cliff edge that drops in jagged ridges to a surging, green sea below. The wind tugs and pulls and Rey screams into it. She paces the line of the cliff, screams again.

She'd had her chance to end this and she'd failed.

One by one, he would pick them off until there was no hope left in the Galaxy. For all she knew, this was her fault. Cloud City was distinctive, the clothes she was wearing there were a product of the city itself. And the force had connected them there, in that room where she'd tried with everything she had to break it.

She'd practically told him where they were. And he'd used it to capture Chewie.

_Her fault._

She'd done this, and no-one else could fix it.

So, she would fix it herself.

By the time she got back to camp, the mess hall was full. The inhabitants of this planet were small, hairy and full of nervous energy as they moved between the Resistance members, tasting portion rations from indiscriminate trays, sniffing them with obvious disgust.

She found C3-PO in the comms room, translating coded transmissions from Naboo.

“I need a favour,” she told him, “I have a mission of the utmost importance and I cannot think of anyone I would trust with this, more than you.”

He turned his upper body toward her.

“Well, I am known to be one of the most trustworthy prototypes of my generation-” he began and she stopped him with raised a hand.

“In my bunk, there's a Jedi text. It's the one with the yellow cover. I need you to find the note I left inside it and bring it to Leia directly, at lights out. Can you do that?”

“Well, of course I can, but surely this is something that any droid with retracting-”

“No, C3-PO,” Rey rests a hand on the cold metal of his arm, “it has to be you, you're my only hope.”

He stands.

“I am honored to be-”

“Yeah, thanks.” She pushes him till he backs out the door.

Rey locks it behind him and searches the transmission file until she finds the link for the ship she wants.

She feels sick but she gives co-ordinates a few klicks east of their camp.

_Meet me here, alone. I'll go with you if you leave the Resistance unharmed._

She closes the comms door behind her and returns to the mess. From the doorway, she watches as Finn throws an easy arm around Rose's shoulders and leans them both forward to talk to Poe. Leia is not with them. She never leaves the command room anymore and Rey cannot risk that her sensitivity to the force won't pick up on her feelings. 

As she leaves the base, with nothing but her lightsaber and a deep pit in her stomach, the bond hums in her mind. She reaches for it without thinking. She is so alone now, though she is the one who has left. Touching that part of her that connects her to someone else, no matter who it is, makes her feel lighter. But she cannot feel much from the tendril that has grown again in her mind. He must be sleeping.

It's odd to think of him like that, asleep and vulnerable.

By the time she reaches the cliff face, Sorrin's ship is already breaching the atmosphere. They must have been close to finding her again.

She waits for him at the edge, stepping back until she feels her heels against the drop.

“So,” he says in his distorted voice, as he alights from the ship, “we meet again.”

Rey nods. Her throat is dry.

“I need your word that Kylo Ren will release Chewbacca.”

The Knight tilts his head in assent and extends his arm toward the ship. He almost bows and she feels the spike of rage she was waiting for. There is such power in anger, she feels herself fill with it.

The Knight has not carried his giant blade with him this time, it rests against the door of the ship. She notes the saber at his belt. That, she can handle more easily.

She thrusts her hand forward and the landing ramp slams shut with a metallic screech. The force of it buckles the ship at the seams.

She had not meant to close it so hard, just fast.

The Knight jumps back from the ship and his shoulders move in an exaggerated sigh. He shakes his head slowly and she waits for him to unclip his saber.

_I can do this_.

She runs forward to meet him with a savage yell.

If Kylo wants to swap Chewie, she'll have someone he might want back.


	5. Like a Prayer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorrin take matters into his own hands

Rey's saber flashes and sparks against Sorrin's.

She dances around him, using her speed against his strength. But every downward stroke of his blade saps her energy. He sees this advantage and lands blow after blow that she must deflect. He is practiced, effortless.

The next clash comes fast and Sorrin uses his weight to push Rey to her knee.

She breathes.

Their sabers flare back up toward him and he shifts in surprise, then doubles his effort. She pushes until the force has raised the clash of lightsabers high above her head, then swerves out from underneath the knight, kicking the back of his knee so he has to take a few steps to maintain his balance. It gives her enough time to get back to her feet, to move to a higher position on the clifftop.

The wind is whipping around them and the sea below crashes against the white rock in a constant rush of noise.

There is a dark shape in the corner of her eye. It holds entirely still.

He's here.

He's here and she can't block him out. She needs all her energy for this fight. She tries not to focus on the darkness of his form as Sorrin takes another run at her, angrier this time, saber raised high behind his head. She sidesteps the downward spiral of slashing light, drops to one knee and cuts through his thigh. His roar in response is deafening and her eyes catch a small movement at the edge of her field of vision.

Kylo has taken a step toward her.

She gives Sorrin space, steps back to allow him to stand and turn to face her again. She will not run her saber through his back like a coward.

But she can't help it. Her eyes flick toward Kylo and he is watching at her again, tense and concentrated.

Rey is looking right at him when the blaster fire knocks her off her feet.

Her head hits the ground hard and her vision whitens and then sharpens again, adrenaline rushing through her. She tries to rise but her body won't obey.

She falls back against the rock. A thick trail of blood runs down the side of her neck as she blinks to clear her vision.

The back of Sorrin's jacket is smoking. He fired the weapon from beneath his own arm. It must have burned him too because he struggles to stand.

Kylo runs to her.

Rey has never seen him run and he is fast, on his knee's beside her in seconds.

On her other side, Sorrin is rising to his feet, using the lightsaber to balance himself.

She takes her hand away from her stomach, where the blaster hit. Her palm is slick and the blood splashes back onto that part of her she can no longer feel.

Kylo's mouth is open, staring at her midsection. He leans down, his bare hands on either side of her head.

“No.”

He says it quietly, like he's confused.

When she takes a breath, her own blood gurgles at the base of her throat and she coughs a trail of it over her chin. Sorrin is stalking to where she lies, taking his time.

She looks up at Kylo and he is staring at her. His face is so close she can feel his breath, feel the darkness of his force energy, swirling angrily around them. He's frozen in the midst of it.

She looks to Sorrin and coughs again.

No words will come and it is all she can do to breathe around her own blood, pooling at the back of her throat.

Kylo's eyes follow Rey's, to where Sorrin is approaching but he looks back at her just as quickly. He cannot see what she is looking at and there is a flare of panic in his eyes before he closes them, concentrating.

There is pressure on her stomach. When she looks down at the spike of pain, his hand is pressed over hers, stemming the flow of her blood from the wound.

There is more to this, something he is trying to do, but her mind is fogging and she cannot think what it might be.

Sorrin looms over her.

“You will bring the Jedi to me, _alive_.”

Kylo has raised his free hand toward where Rey is staring, trying to reach Sorrin, to make him obey. But he cannot see the knight and he already knows it won't work. It sounds more like a desperate plea than a command.

The lightsaber has fallen from her grasp and her arms are sluggish, heavy. They won't respond the way she wants. She can't feel the Force, much less mold it to her will. Even the connection to Kylo is weak and fluttering, though he is right here, right beside her.

She wants to reach out. To call her saber to her. Instead, her hand moves to cover his, where it staunches her blood.

When he looks at her, there is fear in his hunched shoulders, she hears it in his shortened breath.

She tries to focus only on his face, the way his jaw is ticking, the way his mouth is moving like he's biting the inside of his lip. But, above her, Sorrin is raising his lightsaber.

Her fingers tighten on Ben's wrist and her eyes flick wildly between his and the raised sword.

“No,” he says and the word is quiet and strained. Rey hears it over and over again, like a prayer.

She tries to hold his gaze, but the lightsaber begins its descent toward her and she can't help but turn her head away. Her cheek presses against his knee and then he is leaning over her and she can't see Sorrin anymore.

The moment of her death will be shielded from her eyes and she is glad Ben is there.

There is another blast of fire and an inhuman scream above her.

“Rey!”

Sorrin twists on the ground, his arm torn through and barely attached to his shoulder. It hangs at a sickening angle by threads of green skin. As she watches another blast hits his chest and he stops moving.

“Rey!”

Beyond the body, Finn races across the flats of the clifftop, his arms pumping wildly, the blue residue from his blaster fire trailing behind him.

“What's happening?” Kylo is squeezing her shoulders, insistent.

She meets the intensity of his gaze and curses the tears that she feels forming. But she is so relieved, to be here, to still be alive, that she can't help it.

“Finn!”

It comes out as a gurgled cry and her body is heaving grateful sobs and Kylo is looking up as if he can see Finn press his hands against her face, trace them down her arms, searching for the extent of the damage.

She cannot decipher Kylo's expression, some giant swell of emotion that makes her blood still.

Then her body is shifted and her head is resting awkwardly in Finn's lap and Kylo's hands are gone from her. He's still on his knees, looking at his blood-soaked hands when the bond snaps out.

“Poe! Rey's been hit, it's bad. We need emergency evac and a med droid to my position.”

“On my way,” came the short reply from the comm on Finn's shoulder.

“Rey, it's gonna be OK.”

She turns her whitened face to Finn and tries to convey everything she feels with a look because she can no longer lift her arms and her body is so heavy and she is so, so tired of fighting.

Chewie is lost.

Rey closes her eyes.


	6. Me for Chewie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo gets miffed, Ben gets a bit handsy and Rey gets desperate.

Kylo stalks the flickering corridor. There are stormtroopers in his wake. All of them are downed, at least half of them are dead. The rest have run.

He should feel something. But he doesn't.

They were in his way.

The Knights quarters are ahead and he speeds up his pace, using the Force to open the doors.

Ta'Kar is ready for him. No force-sensitive in this system could avoid the vibration of Kylo's rage right now. They could not but have felt him coming.

Ta'Kar is on his knees, his lightsaber held aloft in an open grip. Imeia is behind him, arms by her side, weapon clipped to her belt. Ta'Kar's eyes are clear, upturned and unafraid but Imeai's expression is wary. She is braced at the edge of a battle stance, knees bent slightly and muscles tight. Kylo feels her fear and lights his saber. He points it at the floor before Ta'Kar.

“Sorrin betrayed his vow.”

Both his Knights close their eyes. They had felt his passing, as he had. He does not give them their moment of grief. There is no room for anything but fury.

“Have my Knight's turned? Ta'Kar – do you challenge me?”

Out of all of them, Kylo knows it would be him.

Imeia's hands tense.

“Obviously not, Kylo,” Ta'Kar's voice is easy. He raises his lightsabre higher. Kylo does not reach for it.

“What happened?” he asks them. He does not sweep their minds for their thoughts, their knowledge of Sorrin's logic, but he will, if he is dissatisfied with their response.

It is Imeia who speaks, her voice the opposite of her partner's, tight and cautious.

“We believe Sorrin thought he was protecting you. The girl... she has had an effect on you, Master. It has not gone unnoticed. He must have sought to limit...”

She stops when Kylo turns sharply and slashes at the wall. The sparks singe his skin.

Ta'Kar rises, clips his saber to his belt, seats himself at the table to wait this out. Imeia does not move.

When their Master had driven a hole through to the next room, he points his saber at Imeia's throat. Ta'Kar jumps to a stand but does not move forward.

Kylo speaks to him, does not take his eyes from hers.

“Where is Artane?”

“At the Temple.”

“Call him back,” he de-ignites his saber and clips it to his belt, “we will issue another comm at the twelve-hour mark. If the Resistance has not agreed to the trade by then, I will... execute the prisoner. You will need to ready the Knights for another war.”

Rey wakes to the feel of his gloved hand against her cheek, soft and fleeting.

When she opens her eyes she is alone.

The white room is blinding and she blinks hard into the light. A med droid on her right beeps. The sound of a comm being sent is followed, almost immediately, by the door opening.

“You're awake.”

Finn takes the room in two bounds and leans over her so she won't have to lift her head to see him.

“How bad?” she asks in a thick whisper.

“It's not great but you'll live. We weren't so sure about that yesterday.”

“Chewie?”

Finn sighs, “We have until tomorrow morning. Poe and Leia are looking over our options.”

Rey's body rocks suddenly and she raises a hand over her face to hide the grief.

Finn pulls at her hand and holds it tight in his.

She squeezes back hard, tugs Finn closer to her. She speaks so low he has to lean down further to hear her clearly.

“Finn, tell Leia to agree to Ren's demands.”

Finn's eyes flare wide and he pulls back.

“Have you lost your mind?”

“Finn, please!” she says through gritted teeth and the pain surges in her stomach until the blood drains from her face and she quietens, afraid she might faint. “I can't be the reason Chewie dies. We have to make the trade. We have no choice.”

Finn stands suddenly, pulls his hand away.

“No. We'll find another way. Get some rest.”

He turns and walks out, past the shadow of Kylo Ren.

He is leaning back against the wall, head bowed. He doesn't look up and she feels a flare of anger so strong she could use it to hurl herself at him, injured or not.

Instead, she pushes at the bond, opening it wider until he looks up in surprise.

“Please don't hurt Chewie. Please.”

He pushes himself away from the wall and comes to stand over her. Rey fights the urge to cringe. Or reach out. She is never sure which anymore.

“You survived.”

“This time. Though it would be nice if you stopped trying to kill me.”

He nods, but he looks lost. His eyes flick from hers to her bandaged stomach, swing wildly away and back again. It's the first time she has seen him shaken.

“His orders were to bring you to me, unharmed.” He is pleading, sharp and angry.

Rey's lips curl back, “You sent a monster after me and you're surprised I got hurt?”

Kylo stills. The emotion drains from his face and he looks at her, level and calm.

“He wasn't a monster. And the traitor killed him.”

His words slice cold through her and she reaches up to grab his arm. The bond is open but his feelings are shadowed. She can't pinpoint any one emotion. He is swirling with them, barely containing them. He moves away but she grasps blindly to hold him there. Her fingers find his thumb, pull tight.

She wants to ask him to spare Chewie again but before she can, his hand wraps softly around hers. He looks down at it, her knuckles enclosed in his palm, as if he had not felt himself move and is surprised at the gentleness of his own action.

The bond emits an uncontrolled pulse of his emotion. Fear, helplessness, regret.

And a memory.

So clear she can feel the sunlight on her cheeks. A small boy, laughing, thrown high into the air and caught again by large hands covered with matted brown hair.

It's his memory and it burns him. He pushes it down, clamps it away but she has seen it. He does not want this, wishes the troopers had found someone else, almost anyone else. He tears that thought away too, fighting to clear his mind, to push her out of it.

She twists away from him, hard enough to tear her wound open. Her blood stains a creeping circle in the white sheet. The pain comes in a wave and Rey's eyes roll back.

His hands are on her face.

He says her name, breathes it, and it sounds like pain, like desperation, like stone cracking.

Kylo pushes a thin thread of his own force energy into her. It's not dark. It's not light either. It feels grey and sharp, like a knife-edge. She has felt this before, somewhere. The strength of it floods her body. The pain edges away.

When she opens her eyes she can feel the connection weakening. They don't have much time and his hands are still on her, thumbs pressing soft against the ridge of her cheekbones.

His face is too close to hers.

She tips her chin up.

She is certain she meant it to be a gesture of defiance, but his eyes immediately flick to her lips and it is something else entirely. Something that makes her want to run from the room, to stop focusing on the way his breath is a bare trickle, to stop _looking_ at him so much.

“I consent to the trade, me for Chewie.” she whispers.

He raises an eyebrow.

“It seems your friends do not agree with you on that.”

“When have you ever cared what the Resistance wants?”

The corner of his mouth moves but he controls it so quickly that Rey wonders if she has seen it at all.

“You are in no position to leave, wherever you are, without their support.”

“I'll find a way. You'll help me.”

He leans back, watches her.

“Where are you?”

The bond is closing, the press of his fingers on her cheek is becoming light, spongy.

“I don't know. This isn't where I was before. But I'll do what you want. Just... promise me, you won't kill him.”

He frowns deeply but nods before he disappears.

There nothing she can do now but trust his word.

After Kylo leaves, Rey gets a detailed description of her injuries and expected recovery rates from the med droid. She will be back to full health in three days.

Too long.

She requests a nano-injection. The droid strenuously advises against this. Rey overrules it.

Whirring with disapproval, the droid opens a wall panel near the bed and selects a vial. It administers the injection while droning a litany of common side effects.

Immediately, the savage heat of nano-chemical enhancers tears through her body.

Fire in her arms and fingers, burning in her legs. She twists as the pain sears through her stomach, shredded skin and sparking nerves twisting together in a thermogenic inferno.

The droid informs her that this agony will last for some time yet and asks if she would like to contact a friend or family member for support.

“De-activate.” She grinds the word out and clenches her hands into fists, swallowing fire and trying desperately to keep silent.

The pain worsens and sharpens and she struggles against it. Her hands come to her stomach to ease the flare...

And she remembers.

She sees herself on the battlefield, the Knight above her.

Kylo, Ben, as she had thought of him in that moment, had pressed his hand to her torn abdomen. She had felt something then, though she didn't know what it was. She had felt it again today and it had given her strength, dulled the pain.

She had been fading away, the Knight was about to kill her, and Ben had pushed his own power into her. He had given her what she needed to survive, to make it back to the medbay with Finn.

He had saved her life.

The pain ebbs but there is something else in its place and she lies still in the bed, unable to move with the weight of it.

She had been unable to kill him that night in her bedroom. She had a saber to his throat and she could not ignite it.

He had been unable to watch her die without trying to help her, trying to keep her alive.

Kylo was right. She does know the reason.

She knows.

She curls herself into a ball and her healed stomach groans in protest at the heavy sobs that wrack her but she cannot stop.

It is a long time before she can finally stand.

When she does rise, she knows what she needs to do.


	7. The Cowards Option

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Points for whoever can spot the super-obvious twist on a TLJ moment... smack bang in the middle of a scene heavily borrowed from TROS. 
> 
> Just want to say thank you so much for the lovely comments I've been getting on this.   
> They are actually making my socially-distanced days bearable.

She eats in the new mess hall. Finn and Poe join her and Rey tells them she is tired when they ask how she is, an excuse so she won't have to talk.

Rey doesn't know what planet they are on and she doesn't ask. It's better if she doesn't know.

It might be some time until her next meal so she slows down and gets through two plates of food. The third plate is filled with bread, fruit and dried protein that she slips, bit by bit, into her pack.

Finn and Poe are unusually quiet and she has to work hard to stop them from seeing her efforts at concealing rations.

When she stands to leave, she doesn't say goodbye, just murmurs something about having work to do and walks away before they can notice her sadness.

Her lightsaber and staff are packed away in the med-bay. Once there, she takes extra clothes and five bacta packs. Her bag is filled to the brim.

It feels wrong, stealing all this, but she is used to that feeling now.

People pass her in the halls on the way to the hangar, faces she knows. People look at her like she is the last Jedi. She hates that look. She can't bring herself to smile, or even nod at them. When they hear about what she has done, will that look fade to betrayal or will they understand?

She has no choice in this and, in a way, neither does Kylo Ren.

The Force Bond cannot be broken, she knows that now. Every time she has tried to sever it she has only hurt herself and the bond has grown stronger in response.

This won't be like Starkiller. She is different, stronger. She's seen beneath his mask, beneath the impassive facade his presents to the world.

She has seen who he is and she wishes, with every fibre, that she hadn't.

But her life has always been hard and she has always done what she needed to do to survive.

The walk to the hangar seems a long and slow thing, but she can't move any faster.

“Rey,”

Finn and Poe stand shoulder to shoulder at the entrance to secondary hangar, where the ship she wants is docked. Her friends are blocking her path. Finn stares at her shoulder and she grips her pack and staff tighter.

“You're leaving.”

It's not a question but she answers anyway.

“I have to.”

Poe puts his hands on his hips, “You know, for someone who wanted to join the Resistance, you run away from it... a lot.”

Rey stares at his eyes. Same colour, but so, so different from Kylo's. She feels an echo of that tug, that same want that she has finally put a name to.

She stands her ground, waiting for them to step back and allow her to pass by them. Briefly, she wonders if she could force them to sleep so she can walk away, another cowards option.

Finn rubs his temple and reaches forward, a gesture to appeal and also of frustration.

“This isn't the way to get Chewie back. Ren will kill you, and probably Chewie too and the Resistance will take a hit it can't recover from.”

“He won't. Whatever he is, he's not a liar.”

Finn's eyes widen and he looks at Poe, who shrugs in response. Finn leans toward her to make his point.

“Something's going on with you, I can feel it. You don't look like yourself. You don't sound like yourself. You don't _feel_ like you, right now.”

“Finn, get out of my way.” Her voice is cold.

Finn turns to Poe, “See what I mean?”

Poe nods, “I see it.”

Rey closes her eyes against the concern that comes from her friends in waves. When she opens them, she has decided. No more lies.

“I have to leave. There are things you don't know.”

“Then tell us.” Poe's stance changes, determined and solid, and her own shoulders square to match.

“He's never going to stop until he has me. I can't stay here any longer. Eventually, he'll find me and he'll kill whoever is standing between us when that happens.”

“That will never happen, you'll kill him first,” Poe shakes his head, ducking toward her, trying to push his confidence into her.

Her chin tips back, an angry reflex.

“That's the plan, isn't it? That's why I'm training. The General is teaching me how to kill her son.”

There is a beat of silence while they struggle with what they're hearing.

“Her son is dead,” Finn says, but quieter now.

“He isn't!” Rey hisses it at them and her face contorts with the pain of it.

Both her friends draw back and stand taller.

“Kylo Ren could have killed me in Snoke's throne room. He could have killed me many times. Ben Solo stayed his hand.”

Finn shifts his weight to his back foot and Rey leans toward him, a stance so reminiscent of her training that she glances at her hands as if she might find her saber there. Instead, she fires the truth like a blaster bolt.

“He's in there. He's so close to the surface that I can feel him.”

Finn closes his mouth and his eyes follow a tear as it runs to her upper lip. She senses a burst of pain from him but she can't stop. The words tumble from her trembling lips.

“All the time, across a galaxy. Ben Solo is in there, and he's trapped by what he's done and I can't get to him. I tried,” she pulls in a shaking breath and Finn turns to Poe, helpless.

Poe can't look anywhere but Rey's face and there are deep grooves of concern between his brows.

“I tried so hard. To reach him, to help him. To turn him back to the Light. But I failed... or rather, he did,” she takes a steadying breath, “So now there is only one thing I can do.”

“You're going to kill him,” Finn's voice betrays his doubt. His eyes are wide.

She nods and the tears spill from her chin. She lets them fall.

“Yes. And it will be the Darkest thing I ever do,” she can't stop crying now, can only try to hold the worst of it back. She looks at Poe, somehow knowing that he will understand.

“Because the Light is not enough to kill someone you care about.”

Finn steps back and catches the frame of the door, uses it to support himself. She leans forward and whispers.

“Do you see, now?”

“I understand,” he says and she pulls back from him.

“You do?”

She peers at him, sees the fear drawn into the lines around his eyes, feels the weight of him shift toward the floor, buckling beneath his doubt. His doubt in her.

“Ah, you do,” she says and she tightens her grip on her pack and moves to walk past him. Before she can, Poe steps forward to block her path again. Rey loses her temper.

“Poe, I _have_ to do this now. The longer I wait, the harder it will be. It has to be _now_.”

“You can't go alone. We're coming with you.”

Finn rises when Poe speaks, nodding, but the uncertainty is written all over him.

“You can't help me. No-one can.”

“That's not true, Rey. You're not alone.”

She flinches, covers her eyes so they won't see what those words do to her, the failed hope that lies within them. The sob that escapes her brings Poe's hand to her shoulder. He squeezes hard, and there is such sympathy in his expression that her resolve wavers.

“I'm so sorry,” she tells them.

There is a moment where Finn and Poe's confused expressions lock.

She moves her hand and they drop heavily, unconscious before they hit the line of the force buffer she's created against the floor. She falls to her knees beside them, lips pulled back over her teeth. She presses Poe's face, leans her forehead against Finns.

Leia will have felt that. She will know now, no matter how hard Rey tries to block it.

She picks up her pack and staff and walks past her prone friends to where her ship has been docked, hidden under tarps and signature concealed. Once she escapes the atmosphere she will remove the cloak from the Millenium Falcon's signal.

She won't even have to look for him.

He will come for her.


	8. Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey gets her first taste of Knight Life

It took several days for the Knights to reach her.

Rey had to keep dodging Resistance transmissions and feathering the ship's cloaking so they could not follow her. She had slept sparingly, rationing rest along with food.

By the time the transport arrives, she has not eaten in twelve hours. Not the ideal form to meet with a sworn enemy.

There are three Knight before her now, standing in the docking bay of the Falcon. Silently, she apologises to Han. She's pretty certain she knows what he would have said about this situation.

Chewie is bellowing behind them, his arms in restraints with a Stormtrooper on either side, blasters pointed. There are bloodstains on his shoulder but Rey can sense he is unharmed, as promised. It must not be his blood. _Good_.

Kylo Ren is not with them and Rey stifles her surprise.

She raises her hands, “I'm alone.”

One of the Knights steps forward with a lithe grace, raising her own hands in a gesture of peace. She takes off her mask and Rey is stunned into silence.

She's humanoid, beautiful with dark skin and a sloped chin. A wide line of red pigment spans her temples, covering her eyelids and the bridge of her nose. There is a quality in her eyes that reminds Rey of the kriawolves that stalked her desert home at night. When she speaks, she has a deep, predatory tone that sends a shiver down Rey's spine.

“We will give you a moment with your... friend, before you come with us, if you like?”

Rey can't speak. She nods, distrusting the kindness and using the force to keep track of each enemy position.

Chewie lopes forward. He holds out his arms to her. The restraints are Force released and they drop to the floor at Chewie's feet.

She runs into his arms. He lifts her off the ground to hug her tighter and she thinks of the memory she had taken from Kylo, a moment filled with love and trust. Everything she had wanted in her own childhood had converged on that memory.

“Did you see him?” she asks into a mouthful of hard fur by his ear.

Chewie shakes his head and croons sadly.

“You know what I have to do, don't you?”

Chewie releases her to the floor and takes her face between strong hands. He doesn't say anything but he huffs an acceptance that breaks what is left of Rey's heart.

Instinctively, she reaches for the fear and anger that has been simmering beneath her skin, lets it harden her, protect her.

“Be safe, my friend.” Even her voice has grown steely and Chewie calls a quiet protest.

She steps around him and holds out her hands to the unmasked Knight as the Wookie continues to bellow, louder now.

The Knight comes to stand beside her, looks pointedly at Rey's hands until she understands and drops her arms by her sides.

“He says you've consented to the exchange.”

Rey straightens her back. Her mouth pulls down but she nods at the woman beside her and walks with her to the small craft that looks so out of place in the Falcon's cargo bay. The Knight keeps her mask tucked under her arm and places it on a bench once they enter the hold.

The two Stormtroopers ascend to the flight deck and the Knights take seats on the benches that line the small space. The woman points to a spot beside her and Rey sits, feeling more and more at a loss to understand their behaviour. She is still unrestrained and none of the Knights have a weapon in their hands. Her lightsaber is still strapped to her belt and her staff is tucked at an angle along her side.

She had thought Kylo would come. That the Falcon would be the place where she made her stand.

“I'm Imeia,” the woman says in a deep, controlled voice, and then points to the Knights across from her, “This is Ta'Kar and Artane.”

“I'm... Rey.”

The two men chuckle at her tone and Rey's confusion turns to distrust fast. In response to her sharp look, both Knights remove their masks and settle them between their feet.

Ta'Kar is handsome, Hapan blood, she's almost certain, strong jaw and sandy hair with eyes that are so blue she imagines they must have been enhanced at some point. He reaches across and taps Imeia's knee with raised eyebrows. She passes him something small from a pocket at her thigh and he pops it in his mouth with a possessive smile.

The look that passes between them makes Rey pull back in her seat.

She had thought of them as monsters, cruel and inhuman. That look had made her image of them more difficult to maintain.

Artane is another story. He is slighter than Ta'Kar, only barely larger than the woman, but Rey can feel his use of the force is strong. He can sculpt it easily, it bleeds through his fingers even now. She guesses that has something to do with their easy proximity to the enemy.

As she watches them, the bond crackles like static.

The barrier has softened over the last few days of healing and Rey tenses, trying to gather the force to rebuild the wall around her mind.

But this feels different from the other times the bond has brought them together.

This time he is _trying_ to reach her.

Rey hears him, as clearly as if he were standing in front of her, but he does not appear. His voice is strained with effort.

_Run_.

Then he is snarling, trying to push her out. 

In her surprise and confusion, Rey latches onto him, dragging him to her. His pain blasts into her mind.

There is a mechanical sound, a tearing and splashing that fills her vision with red.

She grabs her head, leans forward with a grunt. The floor meets her knees. She presses her forehead to the cold metal floor and screams with him.

The Knights jump to their feet.

Imeia twists her lightsaber to life and searches the small hold wildly. Artane drops to his knee beside Rey and places a hand on the back of her head, still pressed into the floor.

“It's not her. It's Kylo. He's in pain.”

Then the pain is gone and she is heaving as the residue leaves her. She looks up at the smaller Knights face and he is watching her with an awed expression.

“I had thought it a myth,” he says to her in a whisper and he tilts his chin to meet Ta'Kar worried gaze, “they have a-”

The blast flings them all into the wall of the hold. Rey's head glances the bench and she struggles to keep conscious beneath it.

Smoke and gasses fill the hold and the sound of metal twisting and screeching hull-breach alarms make her head spin.

Then, Ta'Kar is pulling Rey from the space beneath the bench and Imeia has her hands out, tensed toward the puckering wall of the ship.

Ta'Kar pushes Rey back toward the escape pods. Only two are functioning.

He stops cold when he sees them, turns to look at Imeia with a wild terror.

Rey feels the pulse of his intent, the sacrifice of it. He'll stay behind to save her. He has no thought to give the other pod to himself.

“They're big enough for two people, each,” she tells him, grabbing his arm. She'd had plenty of space in that awful coffin she'd delivered herself to Kylo Ren in.

"Fall back," Ta'Kar calls to Imeia, nudging Rey against a pod.

Artane has joined her and their expressions are strained. She glances at Ta'Kar, nudges Artane away and he backs toward the pods, arms raised.

Rey climbs in, twists to the side so Artane can join her. He needs one hand to lean on while the other reaches back to help Imeia with the hull breach.

Ta'Kar is still calling to her, holding their pod open, panic laced through her name.

Artane grunts in exertion and the wall of the ship releases a shuddering flame.

Rey does the only thing she can think of. She places her hand on Artane's shoulder, willing her own force energy down along his arm. The flames retreat and Imeia looks back in surprise. She takes in the scene and drops her arms to run to Ta'Kar. They jump in tandem, like a dance.

The pods slam closed and fire erupts around them before the quiet and cold of space leaves Rey and Artance's shared pod with only the sound of breath.

“Where are we going?”

“Coruscant is the nearest First Order planet. We'll take a ship to the _Betrayal_ from there.” Artane is looking at her as if she were worth a thousand portions and he is trying to figure out how to pluck her from a wreck.

“When did it start? With Kylo. How long have you been in each other's minds?”

She shrugs, not wanting to give him anything but no longer seeing him as entirely her enemy either.

“How long will it take to get to him?”

It's Artane's turn to shrug, “He was following behind us with the fleet. A few hours, maybe, if he's still on board.”

There is a glimmer of that pain in Rey's mind. She can't feel much and she is afraid of searching him out. The sound of him struggling not to scream as he warned her of the danger had twisted something inside her.

“That's too long. He needs help now.”

“Is he still alive?”

She nods and then presses his arm, “We have to get to him though. No-one could survive that kind of torture for long.”

Artane smirks and then rests his head against the cushioned floor of the pod.

“Kylo has survived worse.”

Rey shakes his arm and he frowns as some of her anger leaks into her fingertips. He sits up again and looks at her.

“Are you telling me you were really going to surrender? That you didn't plan to kill him yourself?”

Rey frowns at him and he smiles.

“Minds in pain are more open – yours was practically broadcasting.”

There is another tug of the bond. It's faint but she closes her eyes against the agony that shivers within in it. She wills it not to open, begs the Force not to let her hear his guttural roar again.

“Please,” she says, and Artane mistakes her plea. He reaches behind his head and comms the other pod, directing them to the nearest habitation.

It only takes minutes to breach the dense atmosphere but Rey can feel Kylo knawing in the back of her mind, a constant static that makes her want to clench her fists. It feels like hours.

But then they are out and running past docking bay officers for whatever moon this is.

Rey is focused, more focused than she has been in weeks. Find a Ship. Get to Him. Stop the Pain. There is nothing beyond that.

She deflects blaster fire without knowing where it comes from.

Artane grasps her elbow and pulls her toward a landed ship. Imeia drops to a knee and fires at a patrol that has entered the docking bay from above. Ta'Kar covers her and then takes rear.

There is a fire somewhere behind them. Something immense and metallic falls from the roof and crashes to their left.

Rey watches all this but she doesn't see it.

A tiny bud has opened inside her. It leaks his agony like a river. She stumbles, presses a hand to her head as if physical pressure could stop what she feels.

There is the mechanical sound again.

An icy, determined chill runs through her and Rey's legs stop working.

Artane hauls her with one arm toward the ship, now firing up, trying to get away from them.

Kylo is trying to keep himself back, to pull away from her. He uses his own pain to do it and she understands how from the shape of the force as it flows from his mind to hers.

A container. Why had she never thought of that? She's been trying to block everything, but he had focused on the glimmer of the rope that bound them, insulated it like a taped live wire.

Artane drags her into the priming transport, shoves her into a seat in the small hold.

Imeia is firing out through the gap in the ramp as it closes. Ta'Kar heads straight for the adjoining flight deck.

Two bodies fly from the cockpit, past Rey and out into the docking bay. They are screaming.

Rey curls into a ball.

The bond is pounding, swelling and dragging. She tries to replicate what Kylo has done but she can't catch hold of it.

He cannot bolster it any longer. The container he has constructed around his end of the bond shatters.

When she looks down there is blood on her clothes, the floor. It's not hers, but there's _so_ _much_ of it.

For a moment, she is so swamped with pain that she feels immune to it.

That same mechanical sound.

The force around her pivots and tilts, a reflection of her panic, her fear.

Now when she looks down, it is his ruined body she sees. Stripped to the waist, arms held overhead by something that feels like burning. It saps her energy as if it was attached to her wrists instead of his.

Boots slipping in blood, fighting to keep upright. Something is coming toward them that she cannot see and she is glad she cannot see it.

Her shoulder. White-hot. Metal scraping bone.

She screams and Kylo whips the pain from her with a sudden burst of effort.

He uses it to threaten the man who sits in the corner of the room, tapping a metal device with a look of distaste.

She hears Kylo speak with two voices. Hers and his.

Artane is crouching down, shaking her. He is smirking.

“Who are you going to kill? You can barely stand.”

With a jolt, and something that feels like a grin, she is back in the ship with them and the Force has closed her off from the worst of it.

“I'm sorry,” she says, “I didn't say that. It wasn't me.”

“I know,” Artane says and stands up over her, “I was talking to him.”

He seems so unperturbed, so calm, that Rey sits back in her seat.

The bond is static in the back of her mind again but her shoulder still fires and she can feel her blood soaking into the fabric of her breastband.

“How long until we get to him?”

Imeia turns to look at Rey, then her eyes meet Ta'Kar's in the cockpit. Their amused look makes Rey want to scream.

“Soon. Now let's get a bacta patch on that shoulder. If you could maybe try to be a little more help once we're on the _Betrayal_ and not have us drag you everywhere, that would be great.”

Rey breathes through her nose, trying to calm herself, to pull herself back into her own skin, her own present.

Imeia and Artane are combing the ship for medical and weapon supplies. They work in tandem, collected and steady. She can feel the Force signatures of all three Knights move against one another, feeding each other's readiness and battle-hunger. They are preparing in a way she has never seen before and something inside Rey takes note of it. They are not alone. They are a pack.

“Thank you,” she says to Artane as he passes her a bacta pack for the tear on her shoulder, “for helping me back there, when I was... distracted.”

Imeia snorts and Artane sits back in his seat with a slow smile.

Neither of them responds.

As she waits for the ship to reach the _Betrayal_ , Rey constructs her own container and places it over that part of her mind that feels Kylo Ren's heartbeat slowing.

Get to Him. Stop the Pain. There is nothing beyond that.


	9. Relief... but not quite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey gets possessive and Kylo gets protective / murdery

White-armoured bodies litter the ground of the _Betrayal's_ secondary docking bay.

The hangar is exploding around them. Rey runs ahead of the Knights, stops the blast doors from shutting and holds it in place with the force. She has never done this before, it comes like instinct and it's enhanced by the presence of the Knights.

Her attention is so focused on securing their exit that she does not see the trooper to her right. By the time she has noticed his raised blaster rifle, Imeia has already stepped between them.

Rey lets out a warning yell and the blast door shoots down another fraction at her loss in concentration.

But Imeia has stopped the blue bolt in its path, re-directing it back at the trooper with a wave of her hand.

She learned that from Kylo, Rey knows, and she makes a note of how it is done before turning her attention to the doors.

There are more white-clad feet outside, congregating, waiting for the door to open fully. She can feel their fear.

The Knights are like dark fire in the Force around her. They're focused on the fight and each other. There is a constant awareness of Rey's position in their minds. They radiate toward her, speak to each other with glances and minute gestures as they circle to protect her.

Their bloodlust grows.

Ta'Kar stands at Rey's back. Imeia and Atane run and slide into the small opening in the blast doors. They move as one. A surge comes from them. They work together to throw their combined force into the Stormtroopers like a wave. Bodies fly back and they run forward, cutting them down as they struggle to rise.

Rey ducks toward the door with Ta'Kar standing behind her, covering her back. She holds the door until he ducks beneath it and then she lets it slam on the blasts of fire from the hangar.

Behind her, the room is alight with laser fire.

She can't help it.

The way the Knights work together, covering each other, leaning into the fight with a joyful concentration. It lifts her, pushes at her, she feels herself bubble with it.

The threads of their Force energy wrap her, urge her to move to where they want her, where Imeia thinks she will be tactically useful but not as exposed.

Rey is displeased with this position but takes her place without a word.

They are almost talking through the Force, sharing, opening to each other in a way she has never seen before. She can't cut herself off from it, doesn't want to. She wants to survive this.

She can't help it, she leans into the fight, just as they do.

The hall is cleared in minutes. The screaming alarms are deafening as they run through the ship, searching for him. Red lights glow and dim, warning of their arrival.

Rey hopes Kylo can see them, that it brings him some strength. Then she secures the container she has built around him so she can focus.

Artane holds up a hand at a cross-section and the Knights stop while he turns his head, as if listening. He runs to the right, blasts out a panel of the wall. There is a vertical maintenance shaft beyond it. It dips down into darkness and Rey cannot see where it ends beneath them.

“Five floors up, directly above us,” Artane says and jumps to the opposite side of the shaft, climbing with unpractised awkwardness. Ta'Kar goes next, a quick look at Imeia, sweeping her body to ensure no injuries, and he jumps.

Imeia watches Rey, waiting for her to launch herself into the void.

But Rey is stuck to the ground, her eyes pivot wildly from the shaft to the Knight.

Kylo Ren is five floors above them. She is not afraid of the climb, has climbed much more precarious routes all her life on Jakku. But, now that her container is built and she can no longer feel the burning of him inside her, she wonders what on earth she is doing here, rescuing a man she is destined to kill.

Imeia has not reached out with the force, has not tried to read her thoughts, but still seems to understand what Rey is thinking. She takes a step back.

“You told him you would,” she says simply. She jumps before Rey can respond.

She is right. Kylo has never lied to her and he carried out the terms of their arrangement honorably. If she runs now, leaves the agreement they made behind her, she'd have less integrity than her sworn enemy.

She tries to imagine what Luke would do. Wishes again that he would show himself to her. _A little guidance wouldn't go astray._

When advice is unforthcoming, again, she jumps and scrambles after Imeia, into the shaft.

It takes them almost twenty minutes to climb to the spot Artane points out. It would have taken Rey less than ten but the bodies ahead of her are less used to finding footholds. Artane struggles the most, using the force to cling on several times.

They stop and listen at the bulkhead, beyond which Kylo is being held.

The sounds from the room are muffled by durasteel. They hear the clanking of an armoured boot, a low, short grunt, a sickening crunch, a moan.

Rey moves before the Knights. She jumps Imeia bodily, clings to a support beam and kicks the hatch that leads to the cell. Ta'Kar calls out as she slides across the floor of the cell, but she cannot tell if it's a warning or praise.

There are four stormtroopers crowded into the small room. Nobody fires at her, too shocked at the intrusion to move. Two by the door, hold blaster-rifles. One by the hatch is dragged through by Ta'Kar and kicked out across the shaft, toppling down endlessly.

Rey forces the two troopers by the door to sleep before they come to their senses and fire. She turns her attention to the fourth trooper, who swings a mechanical device he holds in both hands, like a blaster in her direction.

The device is long, similar to a drill she'd seen some of the older scavengers use to break through unyielding heliocrome. But instead of threads, this device has blades, semi-circles of them, expanding and contracting as they spin.

The trooper moves toward her with it and she holds out her palm, clenching until he is entirely prone, mid-step.

The Knights file through the gap behind her but she can barely sense them, barely hear Imeia's slow inhale, or the leathery grind of Artane's gloved hand, balling into a fist.

“Cowards,” Ta'Kar says, and goes to the wall console.

Rey cannot look away. She can not move. Her stomach vaults as she takes in the sight of Kylo Ren.

He is held by restraints tied to the roof. Even here she can feel the pull they have on his energy. They lift him just shy of the floor. Both feet are restrained by short ankle chains to keep him from kicking out.

His body is covered in blood, the skin of his stomach and back is hanging in places, muscle and rib-bone protruding. Both shoulders are clearly dislocated and the strain of his weight on the muscle and remaining skin is hideous.

His face is blood-spattered and impossibly pale, hanging toward his chest. Sweat-slicked hair mats his forehead.

Rey jolts when she realises his hooded eyes are open. He is awake, staring unseeing at the floor.

Ta'Kar taps the console to release the restraints and Imeia and Artane catch him as he falls.

Rey had yet to move from her spot on the floor. When she looks down, her side is soaked with his spilled blood. He couldn't possibly have any left in his body by the look of the room.

She stands slowly and holds her open palm to the trooper with the torture device. She wraps the force around his throat and squeezes it.

But it's not enough.

Rey flicks her finger and the trooper activates the device. Her mind is blank and her sight tinged red as she pushes it slowly toward where his helmet meets his chest armour. She rises from the floor, feels him struggle against her grip. She pushes harder. His mind revolts, desperately clinging to life as he tries to pull away from the weapon he had used with such alacrity on someone else.

It sparks as the blades meet the chin of his helmet and she forces him to raise his head, expose the soft juncture beneath.

The energy of the Knights grows darker around her. They are watching her, noting with barely concealed satisfaction, how dark the Jedi's actions are becoming.

She stops with the blades a hair's breadth from the trooper's exposed neck. Without dropping her hold on him, she leans forward, bracing her hands against her knees.

She is at the edge of a precipice and she breathes her way through it.

Blood sprays in an arc over her and she looks up to see the trooper fall, body contorting with the drill gouging so far through his throat that the tip protrudes at the nape of his neck.

Rey swings her head to Imeia and Artane, who have Kylo held between them, broken arms extended over each of their shoulders.

It is Kylo's barely raised palm she focuses on, fingers extended as the power runs through them. He meets her eye for a split second and she cannot tell what emotion she sees there. Anger, fury, but also something softer. Relief, maybe... but not quite. Now that he's released from the restraints, she cannot sense anything from the bond, it's a dull glimmer in the darkness of her mind.

His head falls forward, his murderous hand relaxed.

Rey feels nothing for the trooper he has killed. There is a part of her that understands, a part of her that is glad.

“Any time you're ready, Jedi,” Ta'Kar calls to her, “we should be leaving. I could use some help with the squadron outside this door,”

He slams his hand against the biometric keypad, a blaster rifle raised.

Rey lights her saber and stands directly in front of Kylo, foregoing her defensive crouch to ensure she can cover his long body from stray fire.

The door opens with a hiss and she smiles as the Knights' energy circles her.


	10. One Broken Thing After Another

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey learns something...

They take an armoured shuttle. It has a tiny medbay.

Artane and Imeia haul Kylo through and lay his broken body out on a cot. The sheets immediately soak red against his torn back.

“He needs a bacta tank,” Imeai says as she swipes Kylo's hair back from his face.

His eyes are still open and he is looking towards where Rey is standing but she is not sure if he is seeing anything at all.

Artane puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Can you heal him while I help Ta'Kar fly this thing?”

Rey frowns.

“I don't have a huge amount of field training but I can try.”

She goes to the banks of medical supplies that line the walls but stops when Artane huffs behind her.

“I mean _heal_ him,” he says and she turns to look at him, her hand paused on the bacta patches as he explains, “It's a lightside ability. It will take Imeia or me much longer to complete and he doesn't have much time.”

Rey feels rooted to the spot for the second time in as many hours.

Behind Artane, Kylo's head drops to the side, his hair falling over his face again. He is struggling to stay awake, she can feel the agony of his body even through the closeted bond.

“I don't know how,” she whispers, and Artane's confused expression makes her chin drop.

“Here, I'll show you,” he says, and promptly grabs her wrist.

He cuts a deep line with a small dagger. Rey pulls her arm away, her free hand instinctively reaching for the saber at her belt.

Behind them, Kylo grunts and moves his leg as if to rise from the table.

Imeia holds his knee down with her own and feeds a line of fluids into the crook of his elbow with practiced ease. A steady line of his blood pools on the floor beneath the table.

Artane raises his hands in a peace gesture and then reaches for Rey's bleeding forearm.

“I'll show you,” he says again, eyebrows raised, as if wondering at her reluctance.

Rey nods and allows her wrist to be pulled between them. He stills and places one hand over the cut.

There's a vibration from Kylo, low and dark. He is staring intently, unmoving but for a tiny pulling muscle beneath his swollen eye. The bond shudders when Rey meets his gaze, she can feel the draw of it and looks away quickly.

If Artane notices, he does an impressive job of ignoring it. He stands very still, waits for Rey to ready herself. When he has her attention, Artane closes his eyes and draws some of his energy into his fingers.

She can feel the darkness of it. It was meant to hurt. There is a tremor of recognition from somewhere inside her that makes Rey stiffen.

Artane uses that thread of darkness to pull the skin of her arm back together, weaves it around the wound and tugs it closed. It hurts, but when he lifts his hand away, the wound is a thin pink line in her skin.

“Sorry, I'm not great at it. There might be a scar. Did you see it, though?” he asks in a tired voice.

She nods, “Yes, thank you.”

She thinks of all the texts she has forced herself to read, her attempts to replicate the ancient rituals. Artane has shown her more in a few moments than countless hours of learning alone.

“Think you can do it?”

“I don't know, I'll try.”

Artane nods and leaves, rushing to help Ta'Kar with piloting the ship they have stolen.

Imeia has run five bags of fluid into both Kylo's arms.

Rey steps toward the bed and tries not to look too hard at the pulsing meat of his stomach.

His eyes are still open and he is watching her, mute. How can he still be conscious?

She secures her side of the bond again, bolting it tight so she won't lose focus.

When she holds a hand out over his stomach. There is a sharp rush of tension and Kylo turns his face to the ceiling, bracing himself.

Automatically, she soothes, sending a wave of calm toward the prone body before her.

When she centers herself again, she feels nothing at all from him.

There is the line of her energy, pulling from within, threading around her fingers and palm. She reaches with it, sweeps over his frame.

There are so many things that are broken. For a moment, she is overwhelmed with it. How can she fix all this? It's too much.

She gulps air and tries to focus.

There. A deep part, something vital, is fading. It leaks black into the space around it. She surrounds the wound, works her energy into it, netting the shredded pieces together, willing them to be whole again.

Below her, Kylo gives a soft, strangled moan. She is hurting him.

She ignores the sound.

Focus.

What's the next thing that must be fixed?

She keeps going, one broken piece of him after another, deepest parts first, then outwards until his skin in coalescing under her fingers.

Somehow, she is sitting now.

Imeia is resting her hip against the counter opposite them, watching the process with interest. Rey sends her a grateful look, for the chair, and takes a moment to rest. There is so much more healing to be done, she's not even half-way finished and she is already pushing herself beyond where she has ever been before in her use of the force.

It's thrilling to see how much she can do, what she is capable of.

The shoulders are harder to heal. The large bones need to be pushed into place. She will have to touch him, physically. She doesn't have enough energy left to use only the force.

She holds her hand just shy of his shoulder, meets his eye in question. He nods, clenching his jaw.

She drives her hand against him and wraps the force around it. There's a massive shift as the bone slips into the socket and Kylo's grunt ends in a long hiss.

But she is touching him now and the container inside her trembles and twists.

Rey tells herself she is almost done. She just has to hold the container and fix the next thing. She's almost there. Not much longer now. She runs the commentary in her head and then out loud.  


"I can do this."

"You can." His voice is little more than a gravelly breath. He's looking at the ceiling, jaw working in effort.

The other shoulder is worse, the muscles and tendons shredded. The bone of his upper arm is broken in several places and by the time she knits the fibres together, Rey's energy is fading and it is so hard to reconnect it to the joint of his powerful shoulder. 

She tells herself to push. She tells herself to push harder. She feels the sickening movement and takes a steadying breath. 

Touching his feverish skin is distracting. The bond surges until she has to close her eyes against it.

She sends half her remaining energy to keep him out. The other half is not enough to force the humerus into its socket.

Kylo is breathing hard, the pain of grinding bone against bone. He is struggling, strained rigid with the exertion of it. But he's also hiding something. With her hands on his skin Rey can feel with so little effort. He's using everything he has to keep her out too.

In his current state, the amount of energy he is using could kill him and she has just spent all this time pulling him back together.

She opens her eyes, meets his. He is closer than she expected as she leans over him to push his shoulder into place. She hasn't healed the black eyes or the fracture in his cheekbone. He's still in pain but it's fading. He is clinging to consciousness, fighting to maintain control.

“Let go,” she tells him. She is so tired. “I won't look.”

He nods once, almost imperceptibly, and closes his eyes.

He re-directs. His energy wraps around hers and the bone locks into the joint with a sickening series of cracks. He moans again, lets the pain drag him under, then pulls himself back.

She tries. She tries to keep her promise but it's like covering her ears against him screaming at her. The container that houses her end of the bond shudders and cracks.

His thoughts are riotous, pounding at her and she is exhausted from healing him.

She cannot block them well enough. They wash over her, an overwhelming series of disjointed fragments.

_Relief as the pain eases, disbelief that she is the one to heal him. A faint tinge of embarrassment. The image of Artane teaching her – jealousy. The coolness of her hand on his skin, a shiver that is not the cold or the fever. The finer details of her face as she concentrates, the line between her brows, her teeth against her lower lip. The heat of her body over his, the tanned skin of her arm close to his mouth, her scent..._

She brings her hands to her head and forces him out, her breath coming in staggered and hitched. Her exhaustion is overpowering and when she pushes away from him, her head hits the back of her chair.

Moments later, Imeia leans over her and Rey has the urge to shove her away. There is so little energy left inside her and Imeia is filled with darkness. With restraint, she lets the blanket Imeia holds drop into place around her and closes her eyes.

She can still feel Kylo but she is too tired to rebuild the container.

Before Rey lets herself fall asleep she hears him speak. Right into her mind. His voice is soft, tired.

_Thank You._

She thinks about not answering but it feels wrong to do so. She lets some time pass instead, hopes he falls asleep.

Eventually, when she realises that Kylo is waiting for her, she answers him.

_You're welcome._

Rey has a question. She sends Kylo an image of himself in Snoke's Throne Room, wielding a saber with deadly accuracy, the twirl of red a vibrating blur around him. Then, confusion.

She is too tired to articulate it more than that.

_Gas._ He tells her and shows her himself, falling from his bed in a cloud of white vapour, unable to raise himself from the floor while white-armoured boots fill his quarters.

_They did it while I was sleeping, used force-subduing cuffs._

While he was sleeping. Oh.

Rey remembers now. The memories he had shared on Anch-To. His uncle, a man he had looked up to all his young life, who was supposed to love him, standing over his sleeping form with his lightsaber lit and a murderous look in his terrified eyes.

Kylo sees her thoughts and flinches, struggling to maintain consciousness, to push to the surface, to open his eyes.

She sends him a wave of heavy calm that exhausts her even further. It didn't have words but he plucks them from her feelings all the same.

_Sleep. Safe now..._

He fights it.

She pushes the image of the Knights, fighting, into his head.

 _Safe_...

He does not try to take anything from her, though she is too tired to stop him now if he did. Still, he is stubborn, battling against the rest his healing body so desperately needs.

She clicks her tongue.

_Stubborn..._

She reaches out a hand from beneath her blanket. She knows where his wrist is, can feel the heat of it near her knee. She wraps her fingers around his bare skin, pulls him into the darkness of sleep right along with her.

The moment before blankness claims them she hears his raised voice, registers his shock.

 _Rey!_ _No!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's right...  
> One dream sequence COMING UP!!!


	11. Sparks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DREAM SEQUENCE!!!!!!  
> This is written in a bit of a weird way that is supposed to be a bit more dreamlike - I'm not sure if it works but it was fun to write. 
> 
> Lets start to earn this explicit tag...

“Fool,” he tells her, and the word is _warm_ and there is something soft and hot against the side of her mouth.

She is so warm. It is the first time she has not felt cold since she left that awful desert planet.

She opens her eyes to him above her. Bare shoulders under her hands, dips and planes of muscle and sinew beneath her fingertips. Dark eyes inches from hers, pupils wide.

His palm is cupping the back of her neck. It is so large that his fingers and thumb rest gently on either side of her jaw. His other hand reaches to pull her thigh so her leg hooks high over his hip.

She makes a noise in the back of her throat, a stifled sob, and he lifts back from her, watches her face with an expression like pain.

His hands tighten. There is effort in his frown and then they are upright, clothed, and twirling with sabers lit.

She lunges for his heart. He sidesteps and catches her and they are pressed together again. Her lips are against his throat. It moves as he swallows.

Her tongue flicks, tastes his skin and there is a frustrated tsk'ing sound above her.

He pushes her back, holds her against a wall with the weight of his body.

She is no fool. She concentrates.

Her eyes jolt open and it's the Falcon. They are leaning against a bulkhead that she knows holds a hidden compartment. Kylo looks to the side and then meets her eye.

“No,” he says, and she shoves him away.

They are fighting again, in a room she has never trained in. It's dark with lines of weapons glinting on the walls. She has a staff. When he sees it in her hands, he almost smiles. The movement of his mouth makes her pause.

He strides toward her, knocks the staff to the side, wraps an arm around her waist that lifts her from the mats. She threads her fingers in his hair. _Soft_...

His lips hover over hers, breath against her mouth. _Asking_...

She wraps her legs around him, uses her weight to pull him off balance.

When they fall there is wet rock beneath them. It is dark and there is the sound of dripping water. He is above her again. He looks up to the black mirror and she watches the skin stretch tight over the line of his jaw.

When he looks back his eyes are soft. His hair falls to almost cover them.

“No,” he says. It's the closest she's ever seen to a smile from him and she reaches up to touch his lip where it curves.

The mirror cracks and bursts, falling, starlike, over them.

She doesn't close her eyes as he rolls. He takes her with him until she is sprawled across his chest. _Graceful_ , she thinks in her driest tone.

There is a low rumble beneath her that she knows serves him as amusement and the vibration makes her want to cry.

He sits up. She rears back as he moves, straddling him. He brings his hands to her face. He is not breathing.

There are white walls around them. Beneath them is soft, black bedding. The room is dark. She has not seen it before but she knows where they are.

This is the place where he stood as she looked away from the scars she had made on his body, as she tried to pull him to her with words she knew must hurt.

“No,” she whispers, and leans her forehead to his.

She pushes him until he is on his elbows and her hands sink into sand behind his head. He lets her move him, his strong body falling back easily, like surrender.

He _wants_ to see where she will take him.

Above her are the stars she watched her whole life, stars that blinked coldly at her while she waited in a hollowed-out metal shell.

Now, when he sits up and looks around, he takes her hand in his, rests the other on the small of her back.

A durasteel placard rises from the sand beside them, thousands of tiny etchings mark its surface. It is enormous, it stretches to the sky. _So lonely_...

He tightens his hold on her.

She drapes an arm across the length of his shoulder, fingers in his hair. She brings her mouth to his.

He is gentle when he kisses her, hesitating as his lips sweep hers. She has always thought of him as so certain, so resolute. But here he seems unsure of himself, or of her.

Then his mouth moves over hers, light and sweet, and there is nothing but the places where they are touching. No sand. No swords. No starships.

His tongue parts her lips. _Softness_.

But there is hardness growing beneath her and her hips move against it.

There are _sparks_ inside her. She breaks away from his mouth with a shocked inhale and presses down on him. She thinks of touching live wires, of the jolt to hyperspace, of a hail of shooting stars.

He makes a low sound, shakes his head as if to rid himself of something.

She kisses away the line that has formed between his brows. She makes a sound of her own _,_ one of comfort, of yearning.

The arm around her waist goes taut, pulls her down against him. Her hips buck instinctively.

Now when he kisses her, it is not soft. It is hot and determined.

He frees his hand from hers and presses the back of her neck. She opens her mouth to the push of his tongue against her teeth.

Their breath is ragged, fast and harsh.

He moves her and she lets him, surrenders to it. He draws their bodies together so heat builds between them and she wants more of it. More of him.

She spreads her hands across his chest and it is suddenly bare. She brings her tongue to the mark she made there and runs the length of it to his jaw. He moans, and the sound is low, filled with _need_. Her hips rock faster. She curls her fist in his hair.

She thinks his name and it sounds like her breath.

Abruptly, he grunts and breaks away from her. His hands spread around her hips, spanning her waist, stalling her. _Wait..._

Her lips are swollen, her body feels hot and wound tight.

She wills him to move his hand, to melt the clothes from her body. If she could ask him to, she would, but she can't catch her breath.

He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head again, tilts his chin away from her. _Not like this..._

She can't move. A coldness is running through her.

A thought that she does not want to have is coalescing in her mind. She pushes it away and reaches for him again but he is solid, concentrating.

She brings her face to his, her fingers curving along the edge of his jaw, trying to turn him back to her, pleading.

“Ben,” she says and it's all her pain, all her secreted desires, everything she feels rolled into one syllable. He answers her with a groan.

When he opens his eyes, he is bruised and bloodied beneath her. The white of his broken rib is jutting from him.

She wants to scream.

Instead, she grasps at his wrist, holds it tight in her fist.

“Rey,” he says, and there is dried blood on his lip. He brings his fingers up to grasp her chin, hard and desperate.

When he speaks, his voice is backed by the force,

“Let go of my hand.”

Her fingers unfurl and she can feel the movement of her body, her real body, far away from here.

Kylo disappears and Rey is lost to the blackness of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the kudos and comments on this fic. They are so kind and encouraging (and also informative with regard to tagging and other newb errors) and I so, so appreciate them.


	12. What Strength She Finds

Kylo has never woken easily. He wrenches himself from slumber to alertness, to readiness, to the feel of his saber next to him.

But now he comes awake with comfortable slowness. He wakes to the feel of her near him.

Bacta patches cover most of his face. He removes them, tossing them onto the floor.

The lights have been lowered to aid their sleep. Rey is curled in a chair beside him, her arm still reaching from beneath her blanket. His fingers move instinctively toward hers, of their own accord.

She had used almost everything she had to bring him back from the brink of death. In the dream, that lack of power had left her vulnerable and exposed. He had taken advantage.

He had not meant to, he had tried not to, but she had taken him straight to where he was most unguarded. She had pulled him right to her.

He feels the quiver of her force energy in his healed body. It is soft and hot, like she is still pressed against him. It makes him weak.

Slowly, trying not to wake her, he rises from the table.

From this angle, she looks small, childlike.

But she is not a child. She is a Jedi, one who had split his face in two with a lightsaber that should have been his. One that had filled him so full of her light that he is throbbing with it. One that has spun his mind in circles and made him forget that he has a purpose, a duty, a galaxy to command.

He has a revenge to arrange.

He turns away, walks quietly to the door. His hand comes to rest on the wall beside it, unable to open it. He leans his forehead to the cold metal and takes a long steadying breath.

Kylo can barely feel her presence now, and he is only a few steps away. She is so weakened. She had done that to herself.

For him.

He goes back and bends down to her. Slowly, carefully, he slips his hands behind her back and knees, lifts her as gently as he can.

The half-starved waif from the forest on Takodana. The feral warrior from the throne room. The scavenger he can still taste on his tongue. The girl who'd looked at him with such trust, such longing.

He shakes his head to keep from bringing it toward her.

She's asleep, for _kriff's_ sake.

And when she wakes, she will probably kill him.

He lays her down on a clean cot, adjusts the blanket around her. His blood has dried to coat her skin. Something in his stomach twists at the sight of it. She had taken so much from him in trying to close the bond, he can feel the darkness inside her, crouching.

When she wakes, he will feed her light back to her, if she will let him.

He turns and walks to the flight deck.

Ta'Kar and Imeia are asleep in one of the small officer quarters. Artane is huddled in the pilot's seat, a steaming cup of overly sweet caf held in both hands.

Kylo drops into the seat beside him.

Artane does not look at him.

“The force-subduing cuffs are new... worrying,” he says, fingers sliding along the belt that holds his daggers.

Kylo has other concerns.

“You could have warned her, told her to fix only the life-threatening injuries. She near drained herself with what you showed her.”

Artane steadfastly watches the viewscreen.

“Imeia tried to stop her... several times. She seems,” he looks now, “focused.”

Kylo leans back in his seat, brings a boot to the edge of the console.

“How far are we?”

“A few more standard hours. Do you intend to train her yourself?”

Kylo's face darkens. He gives Artane a long stare, thinking of his hand on the delicate skin of Rey's wrist. He reaches for his brother's cup and takes a sip, grimaces, hands it back.

“It would seem she is a quick learner.” He flexes his arms, stretching, testing. There is no pain, not even stiffness.

Artane looks away.

“She plans to kill you, Master. I saw it, on the shuttle.”

“Mmmm,” Kylo smirks, instills his voice with a confidence he does not feel, “I have other plans. Get some rest, I'll pilot.”

*

When she wakes, she is in another cot in the same medbay. His bed is empty, crumpled bloodied sheets looping to the floor.

The room is empty, but she can still feel the warmth of him in her fingers, where she pulled him into a shared dream. Her cheeks grow hot and she stifles the urge to cry.

She has done enough.

The bargain was Chewie for her and she had fulfilled it. She had saved his life, healed him. That's enough to deem her side of the arrangement complete.

She cannot stay here another second.

His end of the bond is quiet. He is shielding himself from her thoroughly and she finds a perverse sense of pride in her own ability to heal him so well that he can already keep her out. She lays still another few minutes and builds her own defenses again. It makes her feel sad and she shoves that feeling away.

He had tried to warn her. He was the one who had pushed them out of the dream. Her cheeks are burning with the shame of it.

He knows, now. He knows.

Maybe he has always known.

She has to get out of here. Right now.

She pushes back the sheets and fights the wave of dizziness that rocks her as she swings her legs to the floor. She feels listless and weak, like she's the one who has been torn apart and sewn back together.

She needs strength now and she searches inside herself to find it. There is power there but it does not feel familiar to her anymore. It pulls at her, multiplies her emotions, makes her feel weightless and leaden at once.

She stands and stumbles to the door and she can hear it whispering to her.

Angry thoughts rush with the sibilant drone of it.

Why couldn't he leave her alone? Kylo Ren had forced her to be here and she had been weak enough to comply. Where would she go now? The Resistance would never take her back. She had put them at risk and they would take one look at her and know why her plans had failed. They would be disgusted by her.

They would turn her away.

They should.

She had no right to the title she had taken.

She pushes herself from the med bay, staggering back to the hangar, holding the walls for support. She has to get off this ship. She cannot look into Kylo Ren's face and see his victory.

He has her. He knows how badly she has failed, how easy it would be to bring her to her knees. She has to go, to get as far away as she can from all of this.

There are escape pods lined along the hangar walls and she slips into one quickly. It asks her for co-ordinates.

Clear as day, the darkness that is clinging to her tells her where to go. The only place she ever belonged, the only place in the galaxy that would ever take her back.

She taps the co-ordinates for Jakku.

As the door to the capsule slides shut over her, the pod flickers around her and then goes dark. The location she'd entered flashes to red and the pod does not expel into space.

It's been stalled from the cockpit.

She can't breathe.

She has to get out.

It's pitch black in the pod and the darkness inside her is rising to swallow her whole. There's nothing left of her light.

She has no choice but to use what she strength she finds.

She has not finished the thought when the force bursts from her fist and the capsule's lid flies into the air. It crashes in a hail of sparks on the other side of the hangar. When she emerges from the metal tomb, she feels...

Powerful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think you can guess where this is going...
> 
> Thank you again for all the lovely comments and kudo's - it's so lovely hearing that people are enjoying this.


	13. It Always Comes Back To This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dark Rey (gulp)

Three Knights, all with helms in place, have circled her. Hours, that is all it had been, since she covered their backs in combat, as they have covered her. And yet... she feels nothing but the overwhelming desire to mow them down and leave this ship.

The darkness inside her throbs at the thought. It seeps into the air like a battle cry.

Ta'Kar steps to the side, bringing himself closer to Imeia. The action makes Rey want to scream, to rip them away from each other.

She hears whispering, words in a language she has never heard spoken and yet, understands. It oozes with potency, with strength it is willing to give freely. 

She raises her sword and runs at Artane.

He throws up his hand, fingers forming into a gesture that means she should sleep. Rey does not feel herself deflect it, did not know she knew how to, but she is upon him in a moment and the force of her saber strike drives him back.

Her mind is awash with power.

She sends Imeia across the bay and into the opposite wall with a flick of her wrist. A dagger glances her dominant arm, just above the elbow.

Something inside her feeds from the swell of pain.

The whispering grows louder.

She stalks Artane. He circles the hangar until he has placed himself between her and Imeia's prone body. Ta'Kar is leaning over her. He has removed her mask and his own. He brings his face to hers, ignoring the threat that Rey has become. It's as if he sees nothing beyond her slowly-blinking eyes.

_Weakness_ has left them exposed, unprotected. Rey hisses and raises her saber above her head. The whispering is all she can hear now.

In response, Artane steps forward and drops his scythe. It clatters on the floor before him. Rey's focus instantly flicks to him.

He is weaponless, submitting, and the sight stirs something sick and twisted in her belly. It makes her want to rip him apart, to feel the bones of him grind and crumble between her fingers.

Rey tips her chin back as the darkness envelops her. She whispers the words that coil inside her like serpents. The slither of her voice fills the room.

_Nwûl tash._ Peace is a Lie.

She will kill them all. Then, she will go wherever she pleases, have whatever she wants. She will have whoever she wants.

_Dzwol shâsotkun._ There is only Passion.

Her voice is a writhing thing. She has never sounded this way. She cannot stop. She cannot even panic.

She runs at Artane. 

Before Rey has even registered the presence behind her, a strong arm wraps around her waist, lifting her from the ground. Her legs kick with the momentum of her run.

There is a hand at her temple, a gesture she doesn't recognise, and she feels the deadening in her body like a bolt.

It's strong, and bright, this power that runs through her, forcing her hands to still, then her legs. The lightsaber flickers out and falls away as she drops her arms.

The whispering in her mind retreats.

Beneath it, there is another voice, deep and quiet. It comes from lips that are close to her skin. His voice. Relentless, urging her to do... _something_. She hears her name but she cannot focus on the words.

There is a tug, a swell of intense energy.

It's the bond. He has broken through her defences. She clings to him, twines herself around him. He holds her tighter as she struggles to free herself from the darkness. He pulls hard, hauls her back from the edge of it.

The whispering stops and the bloodlust that had felt hot in her body, cools and leaves her trembling in its wake.

There is blood in her mouth, the taste of iron at the back of her throat.

She can feel Kylo breathing, the heat that radiates from him, the faint pump of his heart against her shoulderblade. His arm is tight around her, hand pressing flat on her ribs. When Rey tips her head back against the bone of his clavicle, the one she had healed with her bare hands, she can feel the feathery sensation of his hair against her temple.

Her whole body is shaking.

Dimly, she takes in the scene before her.

Artane has opened his eyes but turned his face away, as if he has walked in on something private. His scythe is back in his hands.

Behind him, Imeia is rising to her feet and Ta'Kar's glare is so filled with reproach that Rey drops her gaze to the floor.

“She's untrained, she did too much, too fast. It's not her fault.”

Imeia's whispered words, spoken to Ta'Kar alone but loudly enough for Rey to hear, burn in her cheeks.

She steps away from Kylo, sways on her feet. The room is spinning. Her nose is bleeding. Her eyes _hurt_. Are they bleeding too?

She is going to fall.

He must have moved with her because the moment her knees give, Kylo is there. He lifts her, tucks her into his chest and then they are moving. He says nothing to his Knights, just carries her from the room without a backward glance.

She should not be conscious. She knows this. She's siphoning from him, through the bond, but she doesn't know how to stop. It's so open now.

He is angry, scowling at the corridor before them as if the empty space deserves punishment.

Rey stares, she can't help it. He is so... _healed_. Even the fractures in his nose and cheek that she hadn't gotten to, are barely showing signs of injury. There had been a cut on his lip but now they are full. His tongue flicks out to wet them.

He looks down, watching how she takes in all the details of his face.

In this semi-conscious state, she cannot find a reason to stop studying him.

He _likes_ carrying her. It makes him feel powerful, protective. He'd carry her till his legs gave out. He wants Rey to wrap her arms around his neck, tuck her bloodied face against him. He wants to wash the blood from her.

“Rey,” he sighs her name, “We're both... overexerted. I can't keep you out.”

There is the hiss of a door opening, closing behind them. Rey sees nothing but him. He keeps walking and vaguely she realises he is not taking her to the medbay. She thinks of the dream, of how hot his skin had been, of how cold she always feels unless she is with him.

His stride falters. He takes a deep breath and her whole body moves with it.

There is another door and then he stops, hesitates, and lowers her onto something soft, a bed. There is a surge of tenderness when he releases her. Rey blinks up at him, lethargic and heavy-lidded as he hovers over her. 

“You need to rest. Then, we need to talk.”

He doesn't move but Rey can sense his intention. He's going to leave her here. This time, he will lock the doors.

She doesn't care about the door. It's being alone she minds. It always comes back to this.

“Kylo,” she reaches for his hand, “Don't leave.”

He takes her fingers in his, instantly, no hesitation, like he never had a choice.

“I'm afraid,” she tells him. She sends him how it felt when the Dark swallowed her whole. Her eyes hurt, her body is not her own, she had never wanted any of this but she is here anyway, no matter how hard she fought it, and he is strong enough to pull her from the dark side if she falls.

He sighs again, brow furrowed, and then he is sinking, buckling as if beneath a great weight. He drops to his knees beside the bed. His elbow presses the mattress, her hand held aloft, knuckles to his forehead.

“I didn't pull you from it, you brought yourself back. And it was my fault.”

He tries to show her: what her energy had looked like in the forest, _blinding_. How she looked after she healed him, a _flicker._

He leans forward, lowers her hand but doesn't let it go. There is a flare of expectation, Rey is not sure whose it is. His face is so close. 

“Let me give it back to you,” he is looking at her mouth. 

“Your light,” he raises his eyes to hers, then closes them. 

_You weren't meant for the Dark._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Klaxon* Sweet Fluffy Scenes Incoming...


	14. Moments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluff alert!  
> Fair warning - there is a bazillion viewpoint changes in this. I just couldn't find a way to write it from one perspective.  
> Sorry if it's confusing!

When he opens his eyes, she is frowning at him.

He should wait to do this. He knows he should. She is only conscious because of the thin thread of force she is pulling from him. She is not herself.

But her face is streaked with blood and her hand is so small and pliant and there is a constant hazy stream of her in his head. In this moment, he would give her anything.

There have been other moments like this.

Worse, so much worse, she thinks he rescued her.

He had ambushed her, kidnapped her, weakened her, violated her subconscious, and, after all that, she had reached for his hand. Simply because he had opened their bond when he felt her try to pull back to herself. How does she hold what little light she has left with such brightness?

She is nodding tentatively.

Her breath is slow. She is not afraid. She is curious. Of course she is.

_Kriff_. How is he going to explain what he needs to do?

Kylo takes a deep breath. Her hand moves in his, uncomfortable. He is gripping it too tightly. He winces and places it gently on the bed.

“How is it done?” Rey's voice is breathy, dreamlike. She is only barely holding onto consciousness.

Kylo looks away from her. He should wait. He will not do this now...

_Show me_.

He spins the image out to her immediately. All she has to do is ask - it seems he is incapable of saying no.

Kylo shows Rey a memory.

He is young, barely a teenager, lanky and awkward, like his body has grown too fast for him to keep up with. She wishes she had known him then, but she would have been a child and she doubts he would have even tolerated her presence, judging by the scowl that he cannot seem to ease. He is in a training room, something like the dream training room they had been in together, but it is not the same. There are rock walls and windows that slant light onto white mats, where children group in pairs all around the room.

There is Luke Skywalker's voice.

Kylo is showing her the Temple he destroyed, a time when he was a student there, and this is how Rey knows that he is trying to make her feel safe, by giving her something familiar. It comes with a tremor of anger and pain and she hears him breathe to dispel it for her.

Luke's voice, lighter in tone than Rey had ever heard him use in real life, is lecturing:

“In battle, the transfer of force energy can save a life, it can incapacitate an opponent when you siphon it, it can bolster an ally facing a larger threat when you bequeath it. Becoming proficient in it, in both transfer and acceptance, will help not only you, but your brothers and sisters as well. You must know their energy as well as your own. This is today's lesson.”

Rey cannot help the twinge of jealousy. Luke Skywalker had given her so little information when she had begged him for it.

Kylo, sensing her discomfort, promptly skips the memory ahead.

There is a Twi'lek boy, no more than twelve years old, on the floor before him. He rolls his shirt up to his sternum, looks up unhappily. Kylo frowns at him, equally uneasy with physical touch. He places one hand flat on the blue abdomen and concentrates.

He is meant to be passing his energy along his arm into his partner, but he is pulling it to himself instead. Luke is there, admonishing in a tone that Rey is more familiar with.

“Perhaps we should switch positions and you can try again when you are more centered in the light...”

The memory trails off and Kylo is giving her a sheepish look.

_I had forgotten how that session ended. I got better at it... eventually._

Immediately, Rey suppresses the urge to laugh, but Kylo has seen it and he's watching her. His face changes so fast. One moment he looks elated, the next he has schooled his featured into the cool steadiness she is more familiar with. It's such a fast transition, and she is so _tired_ , she is not sure if she has seen anything at all.

It is easier to talk through the bond.

_I've done that_ , she tells him and he blinks at her, _I didn't know what it was exactly_.

She sends him the memory of the shuttle, of putting her hand on Artane's arm to help him keep the explosion at bay.

Kylo sits back on his knees, speaks aloud, incredulous.

“You did that without touching bare skin?”

She nods and he shakes his head at the floor.

_I never got that far. I've always needed the contact._

\- and Rey suddenly understands the reason that Kylo has been sending her calming thoughts.

When he looks up, Rey's eyes are wide. Her eyebrows have drawn up.

There is a torrent of her thoughts that come so fast he cannot catch them. They feel heated but not panicked.

He waits. He looks at the pillow, giving her space to pull back, to draw her own lines in the sand around him. There are wisps of her hair, tendrils that have come loose from those three familiar gathers, trailing across the white fabric. He traces each line.

Her next movements are so slow and soporific that Kylo wonders if some of the trancelike state Rey had been in in her fight with the Knights had remained. She stretches out on the bed. Her hand reaches for her belt, to unhook it, so he can duplicate the image he had given her. Her fingers fumble at the buckle, her body is still shaking. It is hard to watch. It seems wrong to watch her struggle with anything.

He reaches out and stalls her hands. They come to lie by her sides and his fingers hover over the leather fastening.

He glances at her now, seeking her assent, forcing himself to breathe steadily. He braces himself for the inevitable rejection that is to come. But, he reasons, there is nothing more to this than giving back what is hers, what she gave to him without understanding the danger.

There is a bright image of starlines that is so vivid he almost feels the weightless jump of it. Somehow, he knows this is acceptance. He slips the belt open and she shifts so he can pull it from beneath her.

Kylo's hands never shake. They are always steady, in pain, in battle, in torture.

He has done this before, he has taught this technique to others and yet, there is a noticeable tremor when reaches for the rough hem of Rey's tunic. It lies across her hips, his fingers skim the point of each hip bone as he catches the edge of it. He lifts the material away to reveal the barest sliver of Rey's stomach, and wonders if she can feel quake in his fingers when he presses a hand to the curve of her skin.

He frowns then, concentrating, huffing breath.

Lightside abilities have always come harder to him and now he is unfocused, distracted.

It is unfitting that the Master of the Knights of Ren should be so disarmed by a mere inch of flesh.

His brows draw tighter and he sharpens his focus, feels the heat of her at his core, draws it out, coaxing it through his arm and back to its origin. It is easier to do this than it has ever been. He glances at Rey again and she is concentrating too. Of course, she is helping him. She is a Jedi.

Moments. It's finished in moments. And yet, he cannot seem to take his hand from her. He cannot seem to move. He cannot seem to look anywhere but her face.

She is smiling. She is smiling at him.

Rey feels stronger already. More centered that she has been in days. It is relief that makes her smile, exhaustion, the comfort of touch that she feels starved of since her hug with Chewie.

She had never felt the loss of it so much when she was a child, it was simply how things were, but after Finn and Poe and Leia and Rose, touch is something Rey has come to value enormously.

Her light returned is overwhelming and she has that same burst of gratefulness she felt for him on the battlefield with Sorrin.

Kylo is staring at her, his mouth has fallen open and there is a quick burst of frenzied energy from him that he pulls back as quickly as it came. He takes his hand away, slowly.

Rey reaches out to brush his mind without thinking and is met with a wave of warning. He cannot keep her out, he is almost as drained as she is, but the feeling he sends her is just as effective.

“Rey,” his voice is distant, as if he has pulled away more than his hand from her, “we will arrive soon. You need to rest. As do I.”

She nods at him and he stands, towers over her. She doesn't flinch, just watches, curious.

“I can help you,” he tells her, “to sleep. You're still drawing from the bond, I can feel it.”

Impossibly, through some mechanism of her thought process that she already knows will never be clear to her, Rey finds herself nodding.

For a moment, she thinks he will stay where he is, that his hand will twitch like it had in the forest and that will be all she'll see. But instead, he crouches down, rests a hand on the pillow beside her and brings the fingers of his free hand to her temple, so close she can feel their heat.

_Goodnight, Rey._

He leans his mouth to the spot between her brows.

It is not a kiss. It's just the barest glance of his lips on her skin.

It is what she is focusing on when he moves his hand and it is the last thing she feels before sleep finally takes her.

She hasn't once thought to ask him where they are going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the small delay with this update - I re-wrote it, then wrote it again from scratch and re-wrote that so many times it gave me a headache.  
> Am I happy with it? Why no, no I am not.  
> But I'm tired and there is a bottle of wine calling to me from my TM "lockdown-relief cupboard".
> 
> Also, because of some of the fascinating and inciteful comments on here I seem to have written an outline for another three chapters that were not a part of the almost complete fic I began posting up here two weeks ago. A million thankyous for taking the time. It is so, so appreciated.


	15. The Temple of Ren

Kylo sleeps. He sleeps straight through the landing, through the comm's from his Knights, through the light from the viewport that floods the room. The bond is open and the nebulous proximity of Rey is like a drug he cannot rouse himself from. He does not _want_ to wake.

It has been months since he felt her presense for more than a brief moment. It feels like his time aboard the _Finalizer_ , an immeasurable span breathing recycled air, his skin paling to an unnatural hue beneath the artificial light and then, finally, seeing her through the sun-dappled greenery of Takodana.

Rest, real rest, seems only possible with her.

Eventually, when his eyes finally open, the chrono says that more than twelve hours have passed.

He checks on Rey, a reflex. There is the bright colour of her dreaming state and Kylo gets the flash of a bare shoulder he recognises as his own. He pulls back from her with an unsteady breath.

After an icy shower, he comms the Knights for a debrief.

As he strides down the ship's open ramp onto the cool spongy earth that surrounds the Temple, he breathes in the damp, night-scented air and wonders how she will react when she sees what he has built here.

In the training room, Artane is practising with his daggers against a black and red roving target. Imeia and Ta'Kar are hand to hand, no weapons, the thrum of something hot between them.

They are restless, unsettled. Having held back in their fight with the Jedi, the Knights are now questioning why. Kylo can feel the tension in the room with them, in the way they swing without any real weight. Even Imeia is less vicious.

“That's enough,” he orders. They look up from their respective positions. If they want answers, he owes them that much.

“We have a lot to discuss. Let's start with Rey.”

*

Daylight. Actual daylight. She can feel the heat of a temperate sun in a square across her abdomen.

The events of yesterday come back to her in a hazy blur.

She had spoken words in a language she did not know. She had understood their meaning. Her body had twisted with them.

She sits up on the small bed and stares at the door of the refresher.

Kylo had brought her back from the edge of it. She had felt him pull her, haul her away from the danger. In the midst of it, Rey had turned her mind toward his, clung to it, used him to tear herself free.

He had felt like strength, like heat, like safety and comfort. That should not be what she had felt, but it was. And then... after...

Most of it is blurred and dreamlike but she knows he kissed her goodnight, kind of.

She stands and paws at her filthy clothing. Her skin is slick.

As she steps into the refresher, into the warm flow of water, her muscles relax. She sighs into the warmth, inhales the steam.

For the briefest moment, Rey feels Kylo brush her mind.

She brings her hands to cover herself, panicking that he will appear beside her.

And then nothing, like he'd slammed a wall between them.

It takes her a few moments to relax after that but eventually she lets down her hair to wash it. Of all the things she has been introduced to since leaving Jakku, real showers are her favourite. Although, real food, fruit and meat and fresh bread, is a strong contender. Her stomach grumbles.

She showers until she feels guilty about the waste of water, until her skin is scrubbed pink.

When she wraps a towel around herself and steps back into the room, there is a package and a tray on the bed. Food. Some kind of fresh, yellow fruit, thin slices of dark pink meat and a bread roll, still steaming. She cannot remember the last time she ate.

The fruit is delicious. As she chews it, she opens the package. Inside are dark grey training clothes, soft but heavy material. She glances at the filthy pile of her own clothing by the refresher door. They are covered with Kylo's dried blood.

She slips into the new outfit. It is surprisingly stretchy and comfortable, made to allow for range of motion. It leaves her arms free and crosses over her chest so she can twist and stretch.

When Rey is dressed, she goes back to her meal again, tearing pieces of the bread and wrapping the thin slices of meat around them. The meat melts as she bites into it. She groans.

Food. Real food is definitely her favourite thing.

There is the flicker of Kylo again, interest piqued. But it's gone in seconds. Perhaps she had broadcasted her pleasure a bit more loudly than she'd meant. It's so much harder to control the connection to him when he isn't lightyears away but her anxiety over it seems to have lessened.

Rey feels more rested than she has in weeks.

The darkness is gone. Chewie is saved. The Resistance still lives and the First Order seems to be at war with itself.

With any luck, the Knights and the First Order will slaughter each other and she will hitch a ride back to her friends through the space debris of their remains.

She smiles to herself as she stretches her limbs, righting herself abruptly when she feels Kylo outside the doors. He is still closing his thoughts from her, but the bond is trickling his nearness, the feeling of anticipation, of... pride?

There is a knock on her doors. A real knock. The keypad on her side has been disabled, so her comm does not work.

Rey rakes her fingers through her hair, watching the door for a few moments but they do not open. He is waiting for her.

“Um... come in?”

Well, this is odd. It would seem she is a prisoner with some measure of privacy.

When the doors draw back he is wearing different clothes, his hair is combed through and he looks rested.

_How long have I been asleep?_

She says the words straight into his mind as she clips her belt and saber in place and he blinks in surprise.

Rey is immediately annoyed with herself.

There is this strange sense of intimacy, having healed him, dreamed with him, having him draw her back from the darkness, and now this - waiting for her outside her door, like he's Finn or Poe about to take her for lunch.

It's made her lax and she had thought before she'd caught herself.

Worse, there wasn't any of her usual sharpness in her tone. She had sounded relaxed, even welcoming.

“How long?”

This time, she speaks aloud and it is more of a bark than a question.

Kylo draws himself up, steps through into the room and stands close enough to make her brace herself.

He looks at her bed, then back to her. She cannot feel anything from him, no stray thoughts, no emotion. The muscles of her back tense.

“A day cycle, about 26 standard hours here.”

His voice is calm.

_What?_

She's done it again, slipped into speaking to him through the bond. 

“Why was I out that long? Did you keep me under?”

He raises his eyebrows, his eyes shift to her bed again. When he speaks his voice is sharper.

“You were exhausted, Rey. You use the Force like it has no impact on your body, like there are no consequences for your actions. You, a Force-User so strong you can hold a burning ship together, and you know nothing-”

He cuts himself off and seems to realise that he has been leaning toward her because he straightens then, looks away with a soft sigh. 

“You are here because you consented to be.”

Rey closes her mouth. She steps back. There is something akin to horror bubbling to the surface of her mind. He had saved her from the Dark Side and she had immediately accused him of forcibly sedating her... not that he hadn't done that before. 

Still, it may have been rash. 

“Ok... I apologise.”

He stares at her for so long that Rey begins to grow uncomfortable. For the first time, she wishes she had some sense of his emotion, actually  _wants_ to see what he's thinking instead of actively avoiding it, if only to get a sense of what he will do next. 

Eventually, he takes a long breath and his response comes at the very end of his exhale.

“Forgiven.”

He turns on his heel and walks out the door. 

Rey stands where she is. The door is still open. Has he forgotten to close them? Could she run? Is this a test? 

“Are you coming?”

Kylo's voice calls from the corridor. 

Rey steps outside and he's politely waiting for her. He leads her back through the ship to the cargo bay, now lit by the slanting sun. The landing ramp is lowered onto the deep brown earth of a forest glade. 

She follows him.

_Where are we?_

She asks as they emerge from the ship and now she doesn't even notice that she has spoken through the bond again. She is looking up, up at the enormous trees that surround the ship. It reminds her of Endor but the air is different here, fresher somehow, saltier. 

_Kef Bir._

She turns to Kylo and beyond him is a diveted rock wall. Her eyes move over it and it takes her a moment to realise she is looking at a fortress. It rises, jagged, from the brown earth and there are no trees beyond the line of its walls. It comes to her then, the sound she had been hearing. Waves crashing. The building is surrounded on three sides by ocean. 

_What is this place?_

There is the flare of something from him then, as if he could not contain the swell of it. Pride. 

_This is the Temple of Ren._

Home, she thinks. It's what Rey hears filtered in between the words he'd sent her. This is his home.

She thinks she sees Kylo nod, a curt tilt of his head, but he turns and strides toward the building too fast for Rey to be certain. 

Huge plated metal doors, open into a large room. An empty mess hall that looks like it could seat a hundred people. There are long tables with benches at the back of the room, smaller round tables at the front.

_This is where the Knights live?_

So simple, to talk this way. Rey gives her head a shake to stop herself.

“Yes, when they're not on mission,” he tells her, “it's also where we train apprentice Knights.”

Rey swallows hard. 

“A school?”

He gives her a look. 

“Of sorts.”

Kylo stops, then, in the middle of the hall and turns to her. There is that hint of a smile that Rey might have missed if she were not looking so closely. 

“Rey, would you like to see it?”

She is frowning so deeply that the spot between her brows, where he'd brushed his lips, is tingling. But she is also, very definitely, nodding her head. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay in this update. I took a short break to write a Post-TRoS story that came out almost fully formed after I read the poetry of the lovely WhiteRoseRed.  
> Then this fic took yet another abrupt swing after an inciteful note from IslandOwlArcher, so I added three chapters :-)  
> I seriously need to thank you all for the lovely comments. I only joined this site in January and I had no idea what a supportive place it would be. It's brilliant to have something fun to focus on right now because not leaving the house is driving me insane. So, very seriously, thank you.


	16. Several Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo shows Rey what he's been up to...

There is a huge part of Rey that wants to run.

She's had a taste of the Dark Side now and she has no wish to see more. But there is a smaller, more insistent part, that wants Kylo Ren to show her as much as possible so she can bring as many details as she can with her when she leaves this place.

He holds out his hand, away from her, toward another set of heavy, re-inforced doors at the back of the room.

Rey walks ahead of him but when she presses her hand to the keypad, the doors remain shut.

Kylo clears his throat and reaches around her to press his own hand to the keypad. Rey fights the urge to lean back into him as the doors slide open. The seeping of force energy is chilling. There is so much power here.

Wordlessly, Kylo leads her down a series of corridors. At first, the walls are smooth and there are lighting panels that throw stark shadows over their faces. But gradually, as they get deeper into the building the walls take on an older, rougher dullness. The hallways get darker, they twist and turn until Rey knows that she will have to work hard to find her way around this place alone. It is not built to be easily navigated.

At another set of doors, Kylo stops.

He hesitates for so long that Rey is not sure he will open the door at all. She clears her throat, an echo of the last sound he had made.

When he does lay his hand flat on the biometric keypad in a quick, determined gesture, the doors open onto a balcony. Before her are three rows of curved bench seating, overlooking a large training room.

The walls are familiar. Rey has seen these walls of glinting weapons from somewhere but she can't think where. She can't think of anything at all.

Below them are bodies, moving, twirling, fluid and deadly, with various training weapons. They are all wearing the same grey training clothing.

Taller, more authoritative forms move between them, dressed in black, directing, urging, using the force to stop blows just short of their target, where necessary.

Rey grips the railing of the balcony. Her knuckles are white. She stares.

Kylo is beside her, silent, observing. It is a long time before Rey can speak. When she does, her voice is choked.

“How many?” she asks him, still looking at the room below her.

“Eighteen apprentices, eight Masters,” he says, turning to look at her, but then he blinks and shakes his head, “Seven, now.”

She meets his gaze for a brief second, looks back to the training floor.

Sorrin. 

Rey lets the name hang unsaid between them, watching the deadly games below. The students are different species, ages, heights and all with different force ability. She sweeps around them, feels the different energies, the pull within each of them to Light or Dark.

She can sense competitiveness, eagerness, trust, rivalry.

She sees Imeia re-align the offensive opening stance of a tiny Imroosian girl. On the other side of the room, Ta'Kar raises a boot to the rump of an off-balanced human teen boy, knocking him over with a grin and a quiet instruction.

None of the fighting styles the students use seem identical. There is the Ithorian charge that she had seen when she was younger when a drunken brawl spilled onto the street, the tight boxing style that Poe has tried to show her as a joke in the Cloud City training rooms, the acrobatic, force-based display of a young Twi-lek girl.

Individual skills, honed by more teachers than she knew existed in the universe.

“I never stood a chance,” she turns to face to Kylo, “Did I?”

He blinks. This is obviously not that reaction he was expecting and there is something in the set of his shoulders that reads as disappointment.

It softens after a moment and then he leans toward her, from the waist, his hands clasped behind his back. His eyebrow is raised.

“I have several scars that prove otherwise,” he says, and Rey's eyes run the length of the mark she had left in his face.

“What would they have done?” she asks, “If I had killed you? On StarKiller, on the  _Supremacy_ , what would they have done then?”

He takes a breath, brings his hands to the railing.

“There were much fewer students then. The training was more... direct. Most of these students would not have survived it. We've gathered the majority of these apprentices in the last few weeks, after... since I became Supreme Leader.”

He hasn't answered her question. Rey waits until he purses his mouth, waits some more until he responds

“Ta'Kar would have become Ren, most likely, if you'd killed me.”

He does not seem pleased at the line of her questioning.

She continues.

“Would they have come after me, killed me?”

He looks at her sharply, with reproach.

“I doubt you would have let that stop you.”

She turns to the room again. There is shouting below her, one of the students is laughing as the other holds them in a force grip against a wall.

“Yield!” she hears and she feels the camaraderie of it, the force is balanced and thrumming. There is so much power in this room but it is not all dark. It washes against her, over her until she is relaxing into it.

Kylo is staring, back straight, drawn to his full height.

“What did stop you? On the  _Supremacy_ , why didn't you kill me? You could have. I was unconscious and you are no stranger to my lightsaber.”

His voice is so dark. Rey can feel the heat of his gaze and she forces herself to turn into it. There is no response to this question, not one she could ever bring herself to say out loud. And she won't lie. So instead, she echoes his own words in the coldest voice she can bring forth.

“You know why.”

The students are filing out now, to the doors beneath them. Some of them look up toward where Rey and Kylo are standing. They seem to shrink from them. She watches them, unsmiling.

“They're so young. Just teenagers,” she says quietly.

“Most children awaken during puberty. Now, we find them, bring them here so they can learn... so they know they're not alone.”

Rey's head snaps toward him.

There is a ripple in the bond, both of them trying hard the keep it from opening.

“Why didn't I?” she asks suddenly, breaking the tension and Kylo frowns, not understanding.

“I felt nothing of the Force, until Takodana. Why?”

Kylo shifts to face her fully. It makes it seem like he is closer than he is.

“I don't know,” he tells her, “Not without looking.”

He is definitely closer now, he is leaning again.

“Would you like me to look?”

It's a genuine question but there is some kind of heat behind it. It pools in his dark eyes.

Rey doesn't feel herself reach out. It's only when her hand is flat on his chest that she realises she is touching him. And there is the hum of the force between them like a siren call.

His fingers twitch, as if he wants to reach up and cover her hand with his own. Rey presses him gently back until he is standing tall again and drops her hand slowly.

“No,” she is shaking her head but her voice is softer than she meant it to be, lulled by the vibration of the Force, “Thank you.”

He nods and takes the steps two at a time, opening the doors. He waits till she joins him and then seems to falter. He moves his weight from one foot to the other, a shadow of his taut fighting style. Then his expression changes to the steady mask she has not seen in what seems like a long time. It makes her freeze.

“You will not be training with the other apprentices, for obvious reasons. You will have your own quarters, one with a small drill room where your instruction will take place. Imeai and I will be your -”

He swallows and there is a movement of his mouth like he's biting the inside of his lip,

“- Instructors. I'll show you to your rooms. Follow me.”

He is walking before she has even had a chance to draw breath, the rigid set of his body stalking deeper into the Temple depths.

Even if Rey wanted to run, she would not know her way back to the ship from so deep in the bowels of this building.

She has no real choice but to follow him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	17. Not a Child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is what happens when you write drunk and edit even drunker... my sincere apologies.

Her room is sparse, but large, with smooth rock walls that tells Rey this place is far older than the order currently occupying it. There is a small bed in one corner, a seating area with a sabaac table in the other. There is a low set of drawers that Rey imagines are entirely empty and she has nothing to put in them, having left her bag full of stolen supplies on an exploding shuttle.

Kylo stands in the middle of the room as the doors close behind her. He waves briefly to a hallway next to the seating area.

“Training Room and refresher are through there. Your meals will be delivered to you. Imeia will spar with you in the morning and I will teach you in the afternoons. There are datapads here for your downtime, some of the other students here have novels, if you like to read...”

He trails off when he notices Rey is staring, her eyes a little too wide.

She takes in the room again, her shoulders tensing.

“What are you doing, Kylo?”

There is the anger he is more than used to from her. He must have been wondering when it would resurface. But, she supposed, locking her into a cell would not have elicited any other response.

“Why am I here? What is it you want from me?”

He takes a deep breath but it does nothing to ease the tension.

“You are powerful, Rey. You can't go flitting around the galaxy like a child with a blaster. You need to be trained.”

Rey ignores the barb and stands taller.

“And then what?”

“Then, we'll see.”

Rey lets out a frustrated snarl but instead of moving away, Kylo takes a step toward her, an involuntary reaction, judging by the look on his face.

Her hands are shaking and there is something building in her body that she has no real name for. It feels like burning, like rage, like that moment when she'd feel the first give in a piece of salvage she was pulling from a wreck.

“Even Unkar Plutt didn't keep me caged,” she says and she wonders why she said it because it wasn't what she was thinking.

But now there is a surge from his side of the bond and he stills so completely that it reminds her of that second he takes before deciding whether to feint or attack in combat.

This, apparently, is a line she should not have crossed.

He moves fast, bridging the distance between them so quickly that Rey has to work hard not to flinch.

He looms over her, close enough that she has to tilt her head at an odd angle to meet his eyes. When he speaks his voice is quiet, which is somehow more threatening than if he'd stood where he was and yelled.

“You're comparing me to your Slaver?”

Rey doesn't respond. She cannot think clearly with him this close to her. She wants to push him away but there is a thrumming in the force that seems to wrap around them both and she knows what it is but she can't put a word to it.

She forces herself to look away, to draw her eyes along the rock walls and then back to his. She has no words, but he can see what she is saying without even a glimmer of the bond opening.

His mouth tightens and the anger is rippling from him. He is almost vibrating with it.

“Choose,” he says, like he's scraping it from somewhere deep in his chest.

Rey blinks.

“You will choose, right now.”

Rey takes a step backward. Her back hits the door and she tilts her chin, defiant. She cannot help it. She cannot meet this display any other way. In the face of aggression, she has never known how to do anything other than meet it like for like.

“Choose what?” she says and the words are vicious and breathy.

Kylo warps his hands around her upper arms, and for a moment she thinks he will slam her against the metal. She braces herself for it, already planning how she will get free from where he is crowding her against the door, already knowing where her aim will land if it needs to.

But he does nothing, simply holds her in place. The knuckles of his thumbs brush high on her ribs.

“You want to leave? I will walk you out of this Temple, back onto that ship and you can go find whatever hole the Resistance is hiding in now.”

He takes a breath, ducks his head so she has no choice but to look right at him.

“Or you can stay with me and learn the ways of the Force.”

Another deep breath and still Rey cannot speak.

She cannot move and the tugging of the bond inside her head is driving her insane. She wants to rip it open and pour her fury into it, let him feel everything she is feeling until he is pulsing with it too.

“But you choose _now_ , Rey.”

It's the intensity of his stare, the closeness of him, the heat of his hands on her bare skin. The force is firing all around them and inside her body.

All of it is too much and it is instinct now. It's her body reacting to a threat she has never faced before, reaching for a response that comes from somewhere raw and wild inside her. It feels like battle.

She drives her mouth against his.

And he is ready for it, as if he'd expected it, as if he were pushing her to it this whole time.

He steps forward and Rey's back hits the door, hard, but his hands have moved to her spine so the impact is cushioned. Her legs don't move to bring her knee to his groin like she'd intended to.

They squeeze together instead.

His tongue pushes into her mouth and it's hot and insistent but also surreal, as the dream had been. Rey reacts to it in that same heated, vivid way she had then.

She pushes back, thrusting her tongue to meet his and Kylo makes a low sound that she echoes back to him on impulse.

He grinds against her, hips pressing her into the door. His hand cups the back of her neck, tilting the angle of her mouth so he can draw his chest closer, until as much of him is touching her as possible in this position.

He kisses with his whole body, she thinks, and her arms draw tight over his back to feel the muscle tense and release as he moves.

The room is spinning and fading and Rey is clinging to Kylo's shoulders, running her hands into his hair.

She knows she should stop this, she knows it. But it's the same as fighting now and she has never known how to surrender.

His hands snake down her back. His fingers tense on the round of her ass, shift lower to the back of her thighs, between them.

Rey is gasping into his mouth when he lifts her. Her legs come around his hips and that hard part of him is pushing against her, urgent and insistent.

He has done this before, Rey can feel it.

He knows what he is doing now and what to do next and she, as she always is with him, is suddenly out of her depth and uncertain. She is floundering.

Is there no field, no spectrum, no place where he feels as unknowing as she does? Must it always be that she is forced against odds that are just too great again and again? It doesn't matter what she does, how hard she tries, he has already won.

Her body goes limp and Kylo pulls back to look at her, eyes unfocused and half-mad with that same desire she feels in her core.

He freezes.

His eyes grow wider than Rey has ever seen them and he lowers her and shoves himself away. He backs almost the whole way across the room with a stuttering, hurried shuffle. When she blinks, the tears that she had not felt forming, tip over and roll down her cheeks.

There is no sound other than their harsh breath.

Kylo turns in place, dazed, like he's looking for an exit. But the only way in or out of this room is behind Rey. She rests her body into it as her breath steadies, her chin held so high that her nose is tilted toward the ceiling and she's looking down it at him.

“I...” Kylo says with a shake of his head and then cuts himself off, giving her his back.

He rubs his hands over his face and pushes at his hair.

After what seems like hours, he turns his head slightly.

“What's your answer, Rey?” he asks but it already sounds like defeat.

It's not as satisfying as it should have been.

Rey lets her head thump against the door and closes her eyes. There is a truth she has been hiding from. She's been hiding it for so long that it takes a push, a heavy shove against her recoiling mind, to make her open her mouth.

Nothing. Not even a sound emerges.

It's easier to move.

She stands away from the support of the metal behind her. She had wanted to shift to the side, to show him her response by simply allowing him to leave. But she already knows that won't be enough for him.

Kylo will ask her to say it.

And she is not a coward.

She walks toward him and he spins fast, as if expecting her to run him through with her saber but his hands stay by his sides.

She stops at sparring distance, raises her chin.

“Imeia and Artane will be my instructors,” she says and he tilts his head, the cut of his emotions so clear on his face that Rey has no need of the bond to see them. Guilt. Pain. Acceptance.

“Agreed,” he says and his voice sounds so tired. He can't look at her, still staring at the floor.

“Rey, I should have opened the bond. To see what you were feeling. I wasn't thinking.”

It should feel like victory.

It doesn't.

“I wouldn't have let you, Kylo. I might know nothing, but I'm not a child.”

She walks toward the inner doors. She needs to move away from him, she needs to reach for something other than his ticking jaw.

She turns and walks unsteadily toward the training room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to thank you all again for reading and for all the lovely comments and kudos I've been getting on this.


	18. Bacta Supplies are not Endless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry - I had to extend the chapter count for this because there are two more major events I want to incorporate before the break. I also wanted to expand on why Rey is calling Ben Kylo - I got a comment that really made me think about that point so I thought I would explore it a bit more.

Imeia is holding a tray, kicking the side of Rey's bed.

She isn't sleeping, she's meditating, working on keeping the bond closed while she stretches into the force. It comes easier here, in this place that seems imbued with force energy.

When she opens her eyes, Imeia slinks to the table and sets the tray down. Breakfast for two.

It takes Rey almost fifteen minutes of their silent chewing before she can bring herself to apologise for throwing her across the room.

“Well, I have to say I wasn't expecting that much power from such a little thing,” Imeia tells her and her predatory voice is tinged with amusement. But she leans forward then, serious.

“But you fell to the Dark. You let it use you instead of the other way around. Let's make sure that doesn't happen again.”

Rey nods and Imeia leads her to the drill room.

It's much smaller than the large training room she had seen yesterday but it is fully stocked and large enough for four people to spar comfortably.

Imeia makes full use of the space. Her fighting style is acrobatic, using flips and spins to divert attention, the speed of her movement is defensive.

Rey finds herself absorbing the style, flowing into it. Her body becomes more fluid, adapting easily.

But Imeia is a ruthless teacher and every time Rey leaves herself open, or doesn't react fast enough, she is treated to the sharp shock of the instructors training saber.

After an hour, threads of Rey's hair are stuck to her face and there is a damp patch running the length of her back. She is covered in red welts but Imeia is merely flushed. Rey has managed to land blows of her own, but less than half as many as her opponent has inflicted.

The training is brutal, constant reminders of where to use the force, where to hold back, where to save her strength and where to release it. Rey's head is spinning with it.

She falls back to avoid another touch to her chest and Imeia immediately pushes forward. Rey has positioned herself in a corner, she has no choice but to raise her off-hand and shove the jabbing sword back with a force-push that sends Imeia sprawling.

She flips to her feet.

She is smiling, and Rey feels the threat of it.

“Our Master was right,” she says and her head tilts, “you do need a saber-staff...”

Rey should know by now, not to let the anger control her during a fight, but she can't help it. They've sat down and discussed her. She imagines him leaning forward, elbows on knees, giving them his thoughts on her, on what she needs to stop being so inept. She is incensed.

The next spar seems like a series of flashes.

Imeia's expression flits to a sort of delighted concentration, there is the push and pull of their energies, the feel of her lips pulled back over her teeth. Her feet flow without conscious thought and then, in a whirl, Imeia is beneath her, disarmed. The tip of Rey's saber hovers above her chest.

“Well, there's another point I'll have to concede to Kylo,” she sounds out of breath.

Rey clicks her tongue against her teeth in frustration.

“Alright,” Imeia is laughing and she raises her hands in surrender, “no more talk of him. I can see you are as averse to it as he is.”

Rey reaches out her hand to help her up and Imeia walks them to the recessed paneling that holds a supply of bacta, amiably handing her a tube for her burns.

Artane's session is harder.

He is here to show her how to control the Force and he does not start off easy.

They are seated together, facing each other in meditation pose.

“Overpower me,” he tells her and then grabs her throat.

At first, Rey can do nothing but bring her hands to his wrist in surprise. He is not squeezing to the point that she can't breathe, but he is hurting her, a little.

“Not like that,” he tells her, looking at where her fingers are pressing “Use the Force.”

At the beginning, she can't do it at all. She can't focus unless she is fighting, or angry or desperate.

Artane squeezes and cuts off her air supply entirely.

Rey's eyes bulge and she pulls a thread of her own energy into her hands. Artane lifts from the floor, slamming into the ceiling above her.

He drops from her hold and lands smoothly on his elbows and toes.

“Good,” he tells her as he jumps to a seated position again. He rests his palm gently on her bruising neck.

“Now do it again without the stimulus.”

The days drag out this way.

Imeia brings her breakfast and then they train. Artane brings lunch, sometimes Imeia eats with them, sometimes she leaves. Then Artane teaches her how to draw from the well of Force inside her without needing imminent danger to do it.

There are days when he hurts her inadvertently, there are days when she hurts him. It does not come easy and Rey begins to dread the sessions.

At the end of every day, Artane brings her a meal while she showers, leaving it on the sabaac table. She eats alone and spends the rest of her evening that way too. This, she can handle.

But by the end of the second week, she is craving sunlight.

She wants to ask Imeia to take her outside, to train in the open air, but Rey knows Imeia will say no. She doesn't even try to ask Artane.

She lasts three more days before she sits on her bed after dinner and reaches for Kylo.

The container she has constructed around him is so hardened that it takes some work to pull it away.

When it falls, there is no barrier on the other side, no defences at all. Just him. And he is exhausted.

Rey cannot tell what he is doing exactly, but whatever it is, his mind is focused in grim determination.

He feels her instantly and his surprise is palpable.

_Kylo_ , she says, before he has time to adjust to her presence, _I need sunlight, please_.

There is a beat where he has no thought at all, his mind perfectly blank. Then there is a surge of guilt and anger that seems to be entirely directed at himself.

_OK, I'm on my way_.

She doesn't respond, just wraps her end of the bond in the fine mesh that Artane has thought her to create. It holds fast and by the time she is finished it, he is comming her doors.

She presses the keypad. It allows her to open the doors only when commed from the outside by a Knight.

Kylo steps back when the doors slide open.

He is staring.

At first, Rey is certain it's because her skin has paled to a sickly pallor or that perhaps she had not showered away all the remnants of the blood from her last training session. But he's not staring at her face, so much as her hair.

She has left it down, it is still damp and when she pulls it back over her shoulder he seems to shake himself from whatever thought had overtaken him and focus on her.

“Rey,” he says and there is that same thrill she always feels when he says her name, only now it seems stronger than it had been before, “I'm sorry, I should have known you'd need fresh air. Come with me.”

He walks away but waits for her after a few steps.

She follows him down the corridors, memorising the turns and twists it takes to get to the surface. There are no stairs, no turbo-lifts, but the ground slopes upward at different angles and suddenly they are outside the large doors she had last seen two weeks ago.

He opens them and the mess hall is filled with noise.

Rey stops in the arch of the doors, taking in the scene before her. Two of the long tables are filled with students, all talking over each other and passing things back and forth. As she watches, the Twi'Lek girl she had seen in the training room, lifts a jug of blue milk and pours it for a younger human girl, who watches with awe as it's replaced without a drop spilled. The Twi'lek smiles in triumph.

The smaller tables are mostly empty. Imeia and Ta'Kar sit together in the corner. A large Firrerreo man sits alone two tables away with a huge plate of some whole roasted animal whose stripped ribs stretch toward him.

And the doors are open.

A huge swathe of light bathes the centre of the hall, almost reaching to where Kylo and Rey are standing. She steps toward it.

All the noise in the hall stops when its occupants notice them. Kylo puts a hand on her lower back, urging her forward. He keeps it there until they are outside.

The scent of the forest and the sea air hit Rey like a soothing wave. Behind her, quiet whispers suddenly erupt into a tumult of conversations that overlap each other.

“Alright, quiet down! It's a Jedi, not the Jewel of Haarkan,” Ta'Kar calls to the room.

Kylo is watching her as she lifts her face into the sunlight and breathes deeply but when she meets his eye he looks away toward the forest.

“We have stay in the compound,” he tells her, pointing toward the trees, “but there's a trail that leads to the cliffs over there if you want to walk.”

For a moment, it feels as if he might go back inside, leave her to explore the path on her own but when she moves toward it, he follows her, staying a few meters behind.

The path is lined with scrub brush that is in full bloom. It must be summer in this moon's rotation. The air is potent with the smell of some flower Rey does not recognise. There are small lifeforms scurrying between the roots, birds overhead making quiet calls to eat other, interrupted by the crow of something larger that she cannot see.

Rey walks in silence until the path opens out into a small grassy clearing.

The land drops away sharply to a raging sea below. She had not realised how high above sea level they were. The surf below must be hundreds of meters high but no droplets of seawater reach even half-way up the cliff face.

“I was angry,” Kylo's voice is quiet and calm. He is standing by the trees, watching where Rey's feet line up to the edge of the cliff. He takes a step toward her and she moves back from the drop.

“The slavery comment upset me. I lost my temper. I shouldn't have done what I did. I'm sorry.”

He is looking somewhere over her shoulder for most of his speech but he meets her eye to apologise.

Rey frowns at him, takes the deepest breath she has in weeks.

“I think you'll find I started it.”

She takes another step toward him.

“That wasn't your fault. I pushed you. And you are not one to back down.”

Rey watches the curve of his mouth.

“Neither are you.”

The curve deepens and suddenly all she can think about is how he would look if he really smiled.

She turns her back to him and sits on the grass.

“Kylo, come and sit with me.”

Rey watches his shadow approach. Even if she closed her eyes, she knows she could still tell his exact position. He's a beacon of force energy so strong she finds herself wanting to lean toward him as he sits.

“Why do you do that?” he asks the ocean before them.

“What?”

“Why do you call me Kylo? It's not what you're thinking. I can see it. You think one name and then you say another name. It's like a tick.”

Rey thinks of the dream, where she said his name and he'd thrown them out of each other's minds.

“I don't know. Do you want me to stop calling you that?”

“You can call me whatever you want. I will answer you, regardless.”

He is looking at her now but she keeps her face turned to the horizon.

“Ben.”

He inhales, long and deep, like the sound of his name in her mouth is soothing.

“Rey, will you let me work with you, instead of Artane?”

She glances at him in surprise.

“He doesn't want to train me anymore?”

He sucks in his bottom lip. His eyes change and Rey watches the amusement that comes over him with fascination.

“No, he would like to continue, I'm sure, but our Bacta supplies are not endless.”

Yesterday, Rey had blocked a force-punch with such vigor that she'd slammed Artane into a wall. His nose had broken. It was not an uncommon occurrence.

“You're not worried I'll break your nose too?”

He runs the knuckle of his forefinger down the bridge of the feature in question.

“It's a big target but I think you can restrain yourself.”

It's not a real laugh. When Rey really laughs there is usually a snort of some kind involved in it. This is more a huff of air that staggers from her mouth before she can stop it. But she is smiling and Ben is looking at her with that same heat she'd seen from him when she'd kissed him, except it's somehow softer.

“Alright, then. I'll work with you. But I'm not calling you Master.”

He swallows.

“Agreed. Shall we begin?”

“What now?”

“No time like the present. Meditation position. Rey, open the bond.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little more fluff incoming. It seems to be all I can write in this story. 
> 
> If you're looking for realism and grittiness - you may want to check out my other post TRoS-fic because that is Dark as F*ck and driving me crazy with the editing it needs right now. 
> 
> Just wanted to say thank you all again for the comments and the kudos. It's is just so lovely to wake up to notes on this website. I am completely smitten and may never do anything else but write stuff to post here. :-)


	19. Tired of Pretending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mindless fluff alert!!!

_Rey, can you see me?_

_Yes._

_Will you tell me... what I look like?_

_You're grey, silvery, like a dagger._

_That sounds alarming._

_Can you see me?_

_I see you._

Once, when Rey was seventeen, it had rained on Jakku. Torrents of water that hammered her tiny home with such ferocity that she had cringed, her back to the vibrating metal, her hands over her ears to drown out the noise. But come morning, the rain had lifted and when she'd followed her usual path to the wastes, she'd found a pool of water, warming in the desert sun. She had stripped to her underwear and slipped into it.

That's what this feels like.

Like warm water over her skin. Like weightlessness. Like all the power of nature distilled into a basin she can bathe in.

_What do I look like?_

_You're beautiful._

He'd had them face each other in meditation. Without the constant necessity of closing the bond, reaching into the Force came so easily. It was also incredibly difficult to hide anything.

_Ben, what colour am I?_

_You're bright at the core, there are moving slivers of darkness around you._

_And that's why I fell? I gave you all the light and there was only darkness left?_

_Yes, but you pulled yourself back from it, faster than I would have believed possible. It took Imeia almost two months to return when she fell._

_What about you? Did you ever lose yourself to it?_

_Rey, I apprenticed to a Sith Lord._

Even in this space, his voice rings deadpan.

_But you were still you. You weren't speaking Sith, you had thoughts that were more than just 'Kill Everything'._

_Darkness always came easily to me but I... lost my way._

He is tired, there is a bone-deep tremor of exhaustion running through him. 

_Why are you so tired?_

_I've been working._

_Working on what?_

“That's enough for today.”

His voice rings out and he pulls back from her.

When Rey blinks her eyes open, he is watching her with caution.

“What have you been working on? Tell me.”

He sighs, looks to the ocean, looks to the forest.

“The First Order is moving inward to the Core. The Temple is amassing munitions, allies, ships. If we're going to take back control, we will need a swift strike force.”

Rey scoots back over the grass, putting more space between them.

“I don't understand. You want to go back to being Supreme Leader?”

“Not really. But I can't leave the galaxy in this kind of chaos either.”

And there it is. The sudden realisation that she has been cut off from the rest of civilisation. She has no idea what is happening out there, where her friends are, what kind of atrocities have taken place in the time she's been training.

“Rey,” he is reaching toward her, about to take her wrist in fingers.

“Kylo,” she says and moves her hand out of his reach, “It's getting late.”

His shoulders slump but he nods at her and rises to his feet. He holds out his hand to help her up. Rey hesitates and he gives her a sardonic look that makes her think of Leia. She softens, but she doesn't reach for him.

“I'll add you to the comm system, tonight,” he tells her as she rises to her feet and his hand drops empty to his side, “You can come as go as you please within the compound.”

“Can I talk to the other students?”

His eyebrow raises, “Could you refrain from planning a coup when you do?”

That's twice now, she thinks, twice he's made her want to smile.

“I'll do my best.”

The forest darkens around them on the walk back. Kylo stays beside her this time.

The silence between them is comfortable. The terrain is unfamiliar and when she stumbles he catches her elbow lightly, letting her right herself before he lets her go.

“You're not blocking me anymore,” she asks him, when they reach the half-way point.

“No.”

“Because?”

He slows his pace, falling behind and stops completely when Rey turns to look at him.

“I thought you might want to... talk to someone, or feel connected, at least. I didn't want you to feel...”

He trails off and Rey steps closer.

“Lonely?”

He rubs a hand over his mouth, looks between the twilight-lit trees. Half his face is shadowed and she can't make out his expression. Rey is almost tempted to drop the mesh that encases him, to see what he is thinking, but it seems intrusive to do without any warning.

He is still not looking at her and there is a tremor in Force, shimmering between them. It's that same familiar pull that is always there, drawing her toward him.

But now it's dark, and there is the smell of exotic, sweet flowers everywhere and she is out of her rooms for the first time in days and it seems heady and dangerous when she takes another step, brings herself within his arms reach.

Her voice is softer than she expected it to be, somehow huskier.

“What do want me to feel, Ben?”

She could have meant it to sound angry, accusing. But that's not how it sounds at all. Her voice holds a tremor of expectation. She knows what she's asking for, what she wants him to do next. But he's not moving. He's still staring between the trees.

“Safe,” he tells her and she can barely hear him over the sounds of the forest, “I want you to feel safe.”

A hug was not what she was angling toward. Not what she thought she wanted. But she has no need of anything more as her arms circle his waist and his hands press her against his broad chest.

She breathes in the scent of him. Metal and smoke and something hot and dark that is all him.

He dips his head into the groove of her shoulder.

She can feel the heat of his breath on the very edge of her neck.

It's too much again. It's a song in the Force around her that she cannot help but listen to. Rey is just so tired of fighting it. Tired of pretending she doesn't see the glimmer of the person he is beneath all the armour he wraps himself in.

She runs her bottom lip over the edge of his jaw and he turns into her, as if he has no choice.

Rey's eyes are closed. The forest is dark. There is nothing but the murmur of tiny creatures, the rustle of the landscape around them.

Until their lips touch.

And then there is no sound at all.

Then, there is nothing but this.

The hot press of her gentle mouth. The soft sweep of her tongue, swirling against his.

His arms pull her tighter. He can't help himself.

Her fingers clasp around his neck, pulling his head down toward hers. They run through his hair, tugging lightly. When he gives her a short, sharp moan, she echoes it back to him and all the gentleness leaves her.

She is tensing against him, pulling back to breathe hard and change the angle of her mouth. She takes his bottom lip between her teeth and then he is moving, sensing where the nearest solid surface is, pushing her back against it. It seems he cannot restrain himself in the slightest with her.

His hands slip lower, guiding her legs around him.

She is moaning, light, soft sounds, and there is something inside him that surges with every noise she makes.

He could not open his eyes now for all the kyber in the universe.

He feels what she is feeling through the bond she cannot hold closed. He nudges it and she pulls it away entirely.

She is spinning, swirling. He cannot follow her, her thoughts move so fast.

She is so unknowing. Innocent. But there is a part of her that is even darker than he had thought.

It drives his hips against her, showing her where he wants to take her before he has conscious thought of it.

_Here, here, do you feel it?_

_Yes._

_Is it good?_

_Yes._

_Let me make you-_

_Yes._

_You haven't-_

_Ben, just **move.** You're thinking too slow. _

He laughs into her mouth. It's a real sound he can hear in the night that has gathered around them.

She rips her face away from him, her fingers press into his shoulders.

_Did you just laugh?_

_Maybe._

_I missed it. Do it again._

_Make me._

She makes a face at him. Like the weight of the universe doesn't rest on his shoulders, like they don't have a billion lives teetering in the balance of their force energies.

He would give everything, every scrap of knowledge he has ever had, just to see the scrunch of her nose one more time.

_Rey, give me your tongue_.

She slams against him, lifting her lower back away from the trunk he has pressed her against.

There is a noise.

It's not coming from Rey, so Ben ignores it.

She quietens beneath him, concentrating, but he can feel the desire in her mind. It is overpowering. He can't focus on anything but the longing that is sparking inside her. He wants to fan the flames of it, wants to blow his breath against her until she burns with him.

_Ben_ , w _hat is that? That noise, do you hear it?_

_No._

_Listen._

_No._

The curve of his mouth against her lip distracts her, but not for long. 

_Ben! Listen._

_You listen. Tilt your hips... no, like this._

His thumbs hook over the point of her hipbones and he moves his body smoothly against hers. There is a flare of white-hot pleasure from her that makes him wince. 

_Ahh... No really, wait... LISTEN._

He pulls back.

He is staring like he can't see anything at all, like the dark is complete, like there is no glimmer of light left in this twilight world. Then, he focuses on her.

“Shit. It's the internal alarm.”

He drops her legs, grabs her hand, and they are running together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So at this point I'm just letting Ben and Rey do whatever they want. They keep doing things that I did not intend for them to do at all and my original ending will probably never recover...
> 
> F*ck it - I'm having a blast over here.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	20. Cabith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An emergency at the Temple, and Kylo's response to the danger, makes Rey take matters into her own hands.

“Open channel. Status report,” Ben is calling into a comm she can't see. He is running so fast that she has to use the force to keep from falling as he pulls her through the woods into the clearing outside the Temple. He lengthens his stride on the flat.

“Cabith... Holocron library... Gathering the kids in the mess... Kylo...”

It's Imeia's voice, short of breath and fluctuating out of range.

The inner depths of the building must be resistant to radio waves.

Ta'Kar and another Knight that Rey has not seen before are in the main hall, herding younger teenagers into the corner beside the main entrance, which is open enough to let one person through at a time. The inner doors are fully closed.

“Let me help, Master!”

The Twi'lek girl is standing before Ta'Kar, in front of the cowering younger children with her hands balled into fists at her sides.

“I can reach him, I know I can.”

Ta'Kar holds up a hand to silence her and she shakes with fury as they approach.

Ben turns to look down at her and Rey blinks in surprise at the expression on his face. It's grim determination but it's also softness.

“Stay with the other students, Amareth” he quietly tells the girl and moves her to where the children are gathered. She does not look pleased but she does as she's instructed.

When he whips around and points at Ta'Kar, all trace of gentleness is gone.

“What was Cabith doing in the Holocron library?”

Ta'Kar seems to slump as he stands with his saber pointed to the ground. His lip is bleeding profusely and Rey can see a large burn mark, blackening at his shoulder.

“I felt he was ready,” he says to the floor at his Master's feet.

Kylo extends his fingers at Ta'Kar's chest, steady and menacing.

“We discussed that,” he says, his tone so deadly that even Rey flinches.

The thick internal doors slide open a crack and Imeia emerges with two small human boys, both in sleep gear.

Kylo drops his hand, opting to glower instead. Imeia looks relieved when she sees her Master but moves to Ta'Kar's side when the tension in the space becomes apparent.

“Where is he?” Kylo asks her and she shakes her head.

“Somewhere in the lower levels. I checked Rey's room. The doors were blown open.”

He freezes.

Rey closes her eyes, takes a deep breath and reaches out to take a measure of the Force. There is so much fear, panic, there are ragged images of a young humanoid with red hair and light blue skin, stalking the halls, of Artane distracting him with daggers that glance his shoulders and legs, allowing them to escape, of darkened hallways that gleam red in the light of something the boy is holding in his left hand.

“What's a Holocron?” she asks the room in general and Kylo turns to look at her.

“Rey, please,” he says and his voice is soft, “wait here.”

He presses his hand to her waist, urgent but gentle, in the way that makes her think 'Ben' instead of Kylo. But that is not who he is now. She stays firmly in place.

Imeia turns her head between them, like it's a game she is watching and she's trying to figure out who will come out on top.

“Kylo,” she whispers into the quiet, echoing hall, “we need her.”

Rey throws her arms up and growls in frustration.

“Could somebody tell me what is going on? Who is Cabith and what is a Holocron and why is everyone here terrified?”

He closes his eyes against Rey's insistent stare, taking a deep breath into the sudden silence.

“Cabith is one of the older students, he's been here since before...”

He trails off for a moment but he doesn't have to finish the thought because it's how Rey already sees it, that one moment when a lightsaber turned, when a flash of ancient light shone on the person he could be.

He shakes his head and continues, “A Holocron is a teaching device that contains some of the force energy of a Jedi or a Sith and everyone is terrified because one of those Holocrons, almost certainly one inhabited by a Sith, has overpowered him and he is currently roaming the Temple most likely looking for a kill and, seemingly, very interested in the last Jedi, considering that he's already searched your rooms. Do you have any more questions?”

Ta'Kar is watching Kylo with a look that Rey cannot decipher. Imeia is staring pointedly between them with her predatory grin and the older Knight, whose blonde hair is cut so short that he looks bald, is openly gawking. Rey thinks that perhaps this is the most they've heard him speak, because it is definitely the most she's ever heard him say at once.

“Yes-” Rey answers his question, but he cuts her off.

“Of course you do.”

There is that hint of a smile that serves him as a full-on chuckle. Rey ignores it.

“How do we take it back from him?”

Kylo closes his eyes. For a moment, it looks like he is thinking, like a plan has not occurred to him and he is trying to put one together as quickly as possible.

But when he opens his eyes, he refuses to meet her gaze.

He looks to Ta'Kar, with reproach.

“We don't,” he says and some of the exhaustion she had felt from him earlier leaks into his tone, “It's not safe to even attempt it.”

Ta'Kar looks at the ground and Imeia's mouth falls open.

“Master!” she says and his eyes move to her, “We can't...”

She trails off, looking shocked that she had dissented at all.

“Can't what?” Rey asks her.

It's Ta'Kar who speaks.

“Kylo would have us kill him rather than put you and the other apprentices in danger.”

A long, high-pitched scream draws all of them toward the children.

Amareth is standing, holding her trembling arms out toward them, her focus on her Master.

“No.”

When Rey thinks about this later, she'll decide it was a terrible idea. She knows this, even now, as she runs down a darkened hallway with internal alarms ringing in her ears and three Knights of Ren hard on her heels. She could have tried to reason with them... but she didn't.

None of them have attempted to stop her, exactly. At the start, she thinks they might have been too shocked to move, but it is not taking them long to catch up.

The maneuver wasn't something Artane had shown her.

Kylo had actually shown her himself, albeit by performing it on her, in the forest of Takodana.

She had raised her hand without thinking, without even considering the consequences.

She's not sure she even knew what she was about to do until he dropped, heavy as stone to the floor, narrowly missing the blast of power from the Twi'Lek girl.

Rey didn't have time to consider anything further before she was running, out through the crack in the doors and down into the bowels of this Force-heavy building.

The balance is skewed, all darkness and suffocating weight that makes it hard to breathe or focus. But she can feel where it's coming from, like it's calling to her. It draws closer as she runs toward it and, around the next sweeping turn, the training room doors are ahead of her.

They won't open for her, she's not on the comm system, and again, when her arm stretches out before her, she is unsure of what will happen.

A bolt of energy leaves her fingers tingling in its wake and the doors blow wide, a gaping, smoking hole into the balcony beyond. The Force comes so easily when she's surrounded by danger.

Rey jumps from the doorway, leaving the echo of the Knights boots behind her, and lands firmly on one knee in the centre of the training room.

The boy is at the back of the dark hall, shadowed and sinister.

From this distance, she cannot tell how old he is, his blue face is tinged purple with the light of a small box he holds in his hand, but from the set of his feline jaw and his sloped, thin shoulders, he seems adolescent. He has no weapon.

He takes a step forward and his eyes glint yellow.

Colorful species.

“Cabith,” she tells him and her voice sounds foreign and authoritative, “Put that down.”

The laugh that comes from him is deep and twisted. She has heard it before. It sends a chill through her spine.

He couldn't have. Ben wouldn't have kept anything of that evil in a place with children.

“Rey of Jakku,” the voice says and even as the boy's mouth forms the words they are out of sync with the sound, “the one who caused my demise, the one who twisted my apprentices' mind against me. I see Kylo Ren has gained, through my death, what he could not have, under my instruction.”

Rey stops listening.

Vile words spew from the child's mouth but Rey is focused on his hand, how it is much larger than hers and how it holds the red-lit box with a tight, long-clawed grip.

“Cabith,” she says his name again, softer this time, “Amareth is upstairs, waiting for you. Drop that box and come with me. You can see her again.”

She goes for the spot where she is weakest herself, remembering the desperation of the Twi-Lek girl and her driving need to protect this boy.

He wavers.

Rey watches him come back to himself for a split second before the box glows brighter in his hand and his face reverts to that dull, vacant expression.

Behind her, the Knights drop to the mats, flanking her. They say nothing, but she feels their intent and she reaches her hands back, feeling the wave of their force energy with her fingers.

They give it to her freely.

It is an overwhelming feeling to be so bolstered in such a precarious position. She closes her eyes and breathes it.

“Let him go,” she tells the monster that is clinging to this boy. He had taken enough in life, Rey will not let him have another boy to devour, “Or I will make you beg for oblivion.”

There is another biting laugh.

“I am not averse to an arrangement, child. Take the box from the boy, hold it with your bare hand, and I will leave him unharmed.”

She can do this. She is stronger than him, she knows it.

The boy holds out the box and takes another step forward.

She hears one of the Knights curse when she reaches out her arm toward Cabith. Their energy wavers, pulls back and then pushes forward again, wrapping around her like a shield, slowing her movements.

Cabith's eyes flick to take them in and then his free hand stretches out, faster than her eye can follow.

There is a flash and for a moment, the whole room is illuminated in a jagged blaze.

She feels it in her stomach first, a burning that races out across her body in all directions. It knocks the Knights away, all of them flying back to land far behind her. Rey drops to her knees, tries to catch her breath, hand on her saber. But she won't draw it yet.

This is a child.

“Still that fiery spit of hope.”

Cabith draws closer, his movements jerky and odd, like the boy is trying to fight back.

Rey's fingertips are sparking with residual energy. There is blood on her stomach, moving slick between her skin and the fabric of her training top.

“Cabith,” she orders, voice backed by the Force, like she'd seen Kylo do in the dream, “Drop the Holocron.”

His whole body strains, the muscles of his shoulder shaking with effort.

But his hand stays clamped around it and the laughter fills her head.

“I will take my retribution, then.”

His fingers snap toward her at once and the static charge of Force-lightening fills the air. Rey grabs her saber to deflect it but she already knows she cannot activate it fast enough.

She has a split second to notice Artane, racing out from the shadows behind Cabith and then a huge black shape skids in front of her.

There is a flare of crackling light and Kylo's body bows with the blast, his hands bracing on the mat.

Artane whips his saber-scythe from his back and skids around Cabith, bringing it down in an arc over his shoulder.

The lightening stops and Kylo looks up at Artane, from his knees.

On one side of his thighs, Rey can see the Holocron. Its red light is fading, still clutched in Cabith's hand, resting on the floor. One the other side, Cabith's body drops, his unconscious face much too far from the Holocron for his arm to reach in any natural way.

Rey's stomach turns and she stares up at Artane, who's wiping his bloodied scythe with the back of his sleeve.

“You cut his arm off,” she whispers, horrified.

Artane blinks in surprise.

“Well, I was planning on giving him a great, big hug but I didn't think that would work out as well as it did for you and our Master.”

Kylo stands.

She doesn't know how he manages to look so sturdy when he'd been hit for so much longer than Rey had, and she could barely feel her legs.

“Artane, Ta'Kar, take him to the infirmary.” Kylo's voice sounds deeper than she's ever heard it, like it's coming from down a deep well.

The Knights have already risen, as if all of them are more than familiar with the effects of Force-lightening, as if all of them can handle the physical pain of it as easily as a mild headache.

“Imeia, Vackiss,” he says, and the older Knight stands straighter immediately, “Take the apprentices back to their rooms-”

There is a familiar scream from across the room and Rey twists to see Amareth, running at full tilt. She ignores Kylo's call and throws herself on Cabith's prostrate form, her ear to his chest, her face twisted as she listens hard to his heartbeat. Another small whimper comes from her when she senses he is alive and she buries her face in the folds of his training gear.

Kylo tilts his head at Imeia and she draws closer.

“A profyl shot for both of them,” he says quietly, pointing a long finger at the teens, waving lazily, and his voice is sardonic in that way that makes Rey feel homesick, “as soon as possible.”

Involuntary and immediate, Imeia's gaze flicks to Rey.

Rey blinks and turns her head away.

“Yes, Master.”

There is the shuffle of movement all around her but Rey cannot move from the mat.

“You.”

His tone makes her spine harden. She uses the anger to rise, to draw herself to her feet despite the blood and the pain and the simmering horror that is crawling to the surface of her mind

By the time she is facing him, can meet his gaze, she is burning with rage.

“Follow me,” Kylo tells her and walks away before she can respond.

She follows, because now, with the echo of Snoke's laughter in her ear, she is, finally, going to kill him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm desperately trying to wrangle this fic back into line and it is still desperately throwing me curve balls like it wants to smash my face. I'm also working on another Reylo short story where they are both 80's space nerds that is (OF COURSE!!) turning out to be way darker than I meant it to be.  
> But I will try to post the next chapter by the end of the week. 
> 
> Thanks everyone for reading!
> 
> Finally, RedRoseWhite has a deadly new fic that is super hot, beautifully written and so compelling. I highly recommend you check it out [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23748004/chapters/57035197)


	21. Fighting Fair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo gets real when Rey gets mad

The rooms behind the training area are pitch black.

Until Kylo comes to a stop and the glow panels begin to brighten around them, Rey is following him solely by the frenzied vibration of his Force energy. The bond is completely closed off on his side but that is nowhere near enough to keep him from her now.

He stands with his back to her, rooting around in a metal cabinet set back into the rock wall. It is cold in here, and yet, Rey is warm, like she always is in his presence.

She is staring at the spot between his shoulder blades and neither one of them has spoken a word in the last two minutes, though she can hear him trying to slow his breath.

Kylo finishes gathering what he was searching for and, without turning to face her, he reaches high to grasp the collar at the nape of his neck and tugs his shirt over his head in one sweep.

Her breath catches. She angles herself away.

There is a swooping sensation in Rey's stomach that threatens her balance. Her mind keeps pulling to where he stands in her peripheral vision, the sheer amount of pale skin. The expanse of his back is the brightest thing in the room, drawing her attention despite her efforts. She cannot help but remember the feel of him against her in the woods, moving and hot.

He is a dirty fighter.

His head draws up an inch, chin tilted to the side, feeling the spike of her anger.

“I'm not fighting you, Rey. I need bacta and, by the amount of pain I felt before I shut you out, you need some too.”

He sounds angry, like he's speaking with a tight jaw to keep himself from shouting.

He is also wrong, she thinks, with a smirk.

Rey has learned to heal. It's the lesson that came the easiest. The wound in her stomach is already repaired.

Ben looks back down at his abdomen, ignoring her, fingers pressing to a mark she cannot see on the side of his ribs.

“How _could_ you?”

The words were out before Rey realised she didn't want to talk at all.

She wants to hit him, she wants to make him hurt, she wants to see that cool mask break in half, to see fear beneath it.

“How could you bring any of that _thing_ with you after what it did to you?”

He runs a hand through his hair and Rey is maddeningly hyper-aware of the line of his body, the curve of muscle in his upper arm as he raises it, the shift of his weight to his back foot, the tired slump of his wide shoulders. She has turned to him without noticing.

“It's knowledge, Rey. It's Dark Side energy but it's still knowledge. Destroying a hundred years of proficiency in the Force is... wrong,” he sighs, “I thought it would be decades before it called to anyone.”

Her saber flares to life. Rey holds it by her side, pointed away from them.

Kylo turns to face her, closes his eyes, as if he would do nothing to stop her if she wanted to run him through with it.

“That boy is a child.”

“Yes.”

“And what happened to him is your fault.”

“Yes.”

“And you all claim to be their teachers,” her lip curls, and his voice sharpens in response.

“We are.”

“But you show them that kind of evil.”

“That was... an error. Cabith was not ready. Rey, please. We are learning as we go. We didn't have teachers that could show us both sides. Luke trained us to pull away from everything that elicited any kind of emotion or darkness and then Snoke trained us to value only power and passion. We are trying to build something different here, something new-”

Rey stabs her saber into the floor.

“He lost his arm!”

“Yes! It was that or kill him and I got the impression you didn't want that when you **stunned me in front of my Knights**. ”

There is the thrum of his energy as he raises his voice. It hits her like a wave and the bond _writhes_ , trying to connect them.

Kylo clamps down on his side and Rey struggles through her anger to construct the mesh that Artane had taught her. It slips her grasp.

“I wasn't the only one to turn on you.”

She says it softly, without thinking, concentrating on the mesh.

There is a bitter taste on her tongue. Though his thoughts are closed to her, she feels his sense of betrayal as well as her own. It's not a new feeling for him, he has felt this with every person he has ever loved.

When she looks up now, he is staring somewhere over her shoulder, and isn't this exactly what she wanted? For the mask to slip?

But instead of fear, it's pain in Kylo's expression.

Fall, she thinks, she should want him to fall to his knees before her. She should want to cleave him in half.

He murdered a third of the senators on Naboo only a month ago. He was part of the atrocity of the Hosnian System. He ran a blade through Finn's spine. He kidnapped Chewie to force her here. He brought an evil thing into a place with children so they could learn from it.

But the look on his face makes her hesitate.

There are threads of burns crisscrossing his stomach where he had taken a force-lightning strike for her. There are scars all over his body, some of which she had made herself, some of which are old and faded. In this light, in this place, he looks so broken and damaged.

 _Ben_.

He is still closed off, he shouldn't be able to hear her, but he looks up anyway, meets her eyes as if she had called to him out loud.

“How can you not know that this isn't the way? That some things are too powerful?”

_Balance. Balance. Balance._

It's not Luke Skywalker talking. It's something deeper, something she has felt within herself, at the very core of her being.

Ben looks blank, like he hasn't heard her, so she tries again.

“How can you not know that something so evil needs to be fought, not studied?”

“I don't know that. If we don't study it, how can we kill it, or avoid becoming it ourselves?”

His voice is robotic and, though he is looking at her, he seems far away. There is still that coppery taste on her tongue and Kylo's eyes are glassy, his voice barely a whisper.

“That was the whole point, the reason for all of it. Skywalker, Snoke, I wanted to learn. I wanted their knowledge, their skill in controlling the Force. But neither of them parted with it unless they got something in return.”

He takes a step forward and the coppery tang swells on her tongue.

“You're just the same, Rey,” he tells her, “you want something too.”

Rey shakes her head but he is moving now, fast. He grasps her wrist, keeping her lightsaber away. His other hand moves gently to her neck.

“You want me to bend,” he says, his head drops so his nose is touching her temple. His voice is so quiet, “You want me to turn back to the Light but you don't really know what that means. If you did, you would not be using Force stun or blasting doors open. You wouldn't have kissed me the way you did.”

He moves even closer so her chin is touching his skin, just above the mark she had burned in his shoulder. When he speaks again, his lips brush her ear.

“You use the Light and the Dark sides both, and you're not even aware of which is which.”

Rey tries to control her breath.

“And just like Snoke, just like Skywalker, you want whatever version of me is in your head. No matter what I do, who I really am will never be good enough for you.”

At this, she looks up.

“That's not true.”

“It is.”

He lowers to kiss her but it's too much. She needs space, she needs to think. She needs to get away from the heat of his skin, from the sound of his voice, from the aching sensation that being this close to him causes in her belly.

He isn't fighting fair.

“Don't,” she whispers as his lips brush over hers. He pauses, but he doesn't step back.

“Don't use that,” she says, tipping her chin so her bottom lip presses against the corner of his mouth, illustrating what she means, “ _This_ isn't for battle, it's not for fighting.”

She pushes him away, holds her lightsaber toward him and he calls his own to his hand.

“Enough,” he tells her, his voice dull and emotionless, “This ends now. Rey, you're not a Jedi. You swing from the Light to the Dark with ease. You pulled yourself back from its grip in minutes. I brought you here thinking I could save you from the Dark, but you don't need that. You are already doing what we are trying to teach these students. You are a Gray.”

He has never lied to her. But this cannot be right.

He stares at her now, willing her to understand.

“We're the same.”

No.

She is the last Jedi, the last hope the Resistance has in defeating the First Order and bringing peace to the Galaxy. She cannot turn her back on them. Their fate rests on her shoulders.

She came here to learn what she could. She came here to kill Kylo Ren. She came here to save lives and instead she has found herself falling at Ben Solo's feet.

“I am a Jedi, Ben. I am the last of them.”

He sighs in frustration and then seems to decide something, his body tensing with whatever conclusion he has come to.

“You hold it all so tightly,"he says, squinting, and then, he cools, "But, the last Jedi came here to kill me.”

“Yes.”

“So do it.”

He holds his hands out to the side, his unlit saber held loosely in his hand.

Rey feels glued in place.

“It has to happen, Rey. It was always going to come down to this.”

She says nothing, her lightsaber quivering in her white-knuckled grip.

The truth is, she isn't expecting the jagged flare of his saber springing to life. So when he swings it at her, a light touch to hers that she meets without thinking, it's instinct that takes over. She jabs at his chest and he lifts his elbow high to parry it.

This is a tight space, too tight for anything but sharp-angled swings. He pushes her back toward the entrance to the training hall, deflecting her awkward pitches, barely thrusting his own blade with any real power. He's not trying to hurt her at all, just get her to move.

The Knights are in the training hall. They line the walls like he'd called them there, or they could sense the impending confrontation.

Ta'Kar is openly smiling. Imeia looks tense, her expression distinctly worried.

Rey pushes away from Kylo, giving herself space to fight.

“You want to kill me?” he asks and she is already shaking her head.

“No.”

He smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes.

“But you will. To save the galaxy.”

“Yes,” and it's true.

But there are other things she wants, too. She wants to hear him talk like that again, tell her the things he is afraid of. She wants to kiss him. She wants to make him see that there are some things that must be destroyed and some things that must be saved. She wants him to rest his head on her shoulder and know that he is good enough, that he _is_ the version in her head.

Instead, she raises her saber and runs at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the updated chapter count. I might need to extend it by one chapter again before the end but only if this Ben and Rey get even more out of control than they already are.  
> Yes, I am introducing the whole Paladin thing. That was intended.  
> Thank you all again for the comments and kudos.  
> They are so appreciated in #allthis


	22. Join Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dear Ben and Rey,  
> OMG - Stop Fighting Already!!!!  
> Neither of you want to fight! Please listen to your writer and follow the outline I have prepared for you.  
> No?  
> Attempt to kill each other instead?  
> So be it, you crazy lovebirds...  
> Regards,  
> Denzer

Rey's arms ache. Her thighs are shaking. Her wrists are numb.

There are gouge marks on the walls. The mats are shredded beneath their feet. The air is crackling with their use of the Force.

She bends at the waist, holding her knees and catching her breath.

Ben is sitting, just out of strike distance. The hand that holds his saber is resting on his bent knee, the other is pressed to the floor. The skin of his bare chest glistens with sweat.

Ta'kar has dropped to a crouch and the other Knights are leaning against the walls.

Rey has no idea how long they have been fighting for at this point but it must be hours.

There is a shallow burn on her ribs where his cross-guard had caught her as she twirled to strike him. He had looked horrified, had pulled away from her, pointing at the wound as he put distance between them.

“Heal it,” he'd ordered, and she had given a feral yell and attacked him.

Sometime later, she'd landed a touch to his thigh. It was bleeding now, torn open by his sharp movements, but he still had the use of his leg because, when she'd felt the blade connect, Rey had pulled back so hard that she'd knocked herself off-balance.

She watches him, catching her breath.

“Join us,” Kylo says quietly from his spot on the floor.

It's the second time he's asked since they started fighting in earnest.

She should scream her refusal at him. She should roar her rage across this ravaged room, use it to tear him apart. He knows what he's asking and yet, he says it like it's nothing.

Betray the only people who have ever loved her, the only family Rey has ever had. Walk away from their faith in her. Watch them, and countless others, die at his hands.

The casualness of his offer should be enough to make her hurl lightning at him.

Instead, she whispers in an unsteady voice.

“I _can't_ , Ben.”

Somewhere behind her, Artane pulls in a sharp breath at the use of his Master's real name.

Ben looks away, nods to himself, and then shifts forward to a low squat, watching her through sweat-dampened hair.

“Again, then?”

She takes another breath, pulling air into lungs that want nothing but rest, and gives him a shallow nod.

He rises to his feet slowly, the exhaustion and strain visible.

“Ready?” he asks her, softly.

She lowers her stance, in response, the offensive position that Imeia taught her, and moves to circle him.

It is a dance, of sorts, if dancing could draw blood.

Rey knows what she is doing when she supports herself with the Force in a leap over his torso that brings her flush with his spine.

She is showing him.

This is how I could kill you. If I didn't give you this bare inch to trap your saber under mine, this is how you would die.

And when Rey moves too close in her swing, when her footing slips and she has to correct herself with a sharp jab to his right, Ben is showing her something too: that they are evenly matched.

He pulls his lightsaber back a fraction. It sears her clothing, the smell of charred linen where there should be pain and burned skin.

He looks haunted. Then, the determination piles into his expression again and he backs away to realign himself into the defensive stance she has come to recognise in the last few hours. Whatever form he is using, Imeia has not taught it to her. Smart girl.

They fight a primal whirl across the room.

Advance, attack, re-position, Force push here, step back there.

It is lethal intent that shies away at the last minute, _every_ time. They could have killed each other at least three times each.

But they cannot stop.

No matter the exhaustion. No matter the ringing in the bones of her hand as she switches to a reverse grip. No matter the curl of his desperation as he blocks her sword with a Force-clasp he could have brought to her throat.

If they stop, he will ask her again, and she cannot give him the answer he wants.

The Knights witness it all, fervid and silent.

The bond is open on both sides, neither of them able to maintain a block at this point. She doesn't know when they began to talk through it. She thinks she might have started it herself, a sharp warning when his flagging arm came close to her blade.

But now he is using it to furhter his cause.

_This is where you belong, Rey. I see it. So do you._

_Concentrate, Ben, or next time you'll lose your arm._

Rey pushes out of the corner he is trying to force her into, knocking him back with a strike sequence she pulled directly from his memories.

_You don't want to do this. You want to stay._

_Stop telling me what I want._

_What choice do I have?_

_Here's a choice: Come back to the Resistance with me, or die._

He growls at her, out loud and exasperated.

_Kill me or join me, Rey. I cannot go back._

She raises her arms high, brings her lightsaber down hard. When he catches her wrists in one hand, she has to twist to wrench herself free. She dips her shoulder, swivels her torso until her back is pressed to his chest and he is stretched over her, fingers clasped tight.

Her instinct is to slam her head back against his unprotected face. He sees her intention and braces himself for the pain. Instead, she turns her neck until she feels a pop, and the tip of her nose is pressed into his cheek.

_Let go of me_.

It's not a mind trick. He is just so startled by the close contact, the sudden press of her skin to his, that he complies, and Rey shoves him half-way across the room with a Force-push that sends her to her knees, exhausted.

He lands hard on the flat of his back and comes up to his elbows to glare at her.

_What was that you said about fighting fair?_

She can't answer. She thinks she might laugh. She might be hysterical. She has seen it before, scavengers pushed to their limit by the harshness of their lives, losing their reason and shrieking with mad amusement. Is she losing her mind?

_You're not crazy, Rey. You're just tired of fighting yourself. You know what you need to do._

“Join us,” he says again, so low she almost missed it, and the Knights tense, as if they can hear something final in his voice, though Rey cannot.

The truth is, she wants to.

She wants to stay here and learn everything they know. She wants to be surrounded by people who train together in the Force. She wants to be with other Force-user's, who would stand behind her and lend her their energies when she needs it, to lend her own in return, to be part of something and not singled out as different. She wants to help the kids here.

As always, as she has her whole life, she doesn't want to be alone.

But she can't.

His thoughts are fuzzy with exhaustion and Rey cannot hear the words exactly but there is the feeling of empathy from him, radiating across this destroyed room. Sympathy and frustration and heat and longing.

There is that same grim determination she has sensed from him all night.

He moves his hand, as if to push himself to his feet, and Rey can tell what he is about to do. He will crawl to her, try to hold her, try to wrap his arms around her until she sags against him in defeat. He will send the Knights from the room and let her rest for as long as she needs.

He will comfort her.

She cannot let him. She will break, if he does.

She has no choice.

There is no option but to shove it at him. Her love for his mother, for his father, for the Resistance. She is unrelenting, holding out her hand to help her push into him, though he has almost no defences now.

_This is what Han did for me. This is what Leia means to me. These are the people who trust me and_ _**this** _ _is what you are asking me to give up, for you. How could you ask that when you know where I have come from?_

Ben twists onto his side, clutches the torn mat and spits a harsh, shocked sound through gritted teeth. He pulls his legs into his stomach as he tries to push her out but it's too late, she is everywhere now.

_This is how much she loves you, despite everything you have done. Despite all of it, she would take you back._

The Knights, lean forward. There is the tremor of their apprehension, the thrill of their heightened excitement at what they can feel in the Force, without fully understanding what it is that is happening before them.

Imeia curses and calls to Ta'Kar, a worried warning.

Rey watches Ben snap, knows the moment it happens, the very second when he dips too far into the Dark.

He is on his feet in an instant, barreling forward and, this time, it's in earnest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I feel I should tell you that the next two chapters are written and I will be uploading them this week so there's not gonna be a huge wait for the (super-delayed) smut section of this story. 
> 
> I got distracted by an 80's Reylo Science-Nerd love story that you can read [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23810689/chapters/57208216), if you're inclined, hence the delay in posting but I'm back on track now... 
> 
> I mean as on track as you can be when you've added another two chapters to the story that was supposed to be complete by now. 
> 
> Seriously, I try to get them together and they run at each other with swords. I try to get them to argue and they jump each other...
> 
> If I wasn't having so much fun over here, I'd throw this computer in the trash just to spite them. Buuuutttt.... there is some fluffy adorableness en route and that was the whole reason I wrote this in the first place so, Yay!
> 
> Thanks again for the lovely comments - they make my actual day every single time I get one.


	23. In the dark, I could hide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the author takes Ben and Rey and repeatedly _smashes_ them together until they kiss each other. It's a longer chapter than normal because they needed some persuasion. 
> 
> *Klaxon*  
> Here be the melodrama I live for - you have been warned...

Rey grunts and cries out with every strike she repels. Each blow shakes through her arms, enough to rattle her teeth. Behind her, Ta'Kar curses once, twice, three times, in sync with the grating clash of Ben's saber against hers. She feels them all lean forward, the edge of their unease is palpable.

For the first time since this began, Rey is afraid.

He is so strong this way, as he presses the burn in his thigh and pushes the power he finds there into the high sweep of his blade over her head. Her saber catches it but she cannot hold it. She drops to her knees, reeling back, the angle pushing her upper back toward the floor, the blade-lock screaming above her chest. Her arms tremble and shake as she shoves hard to the side, trying to duck beneath and roll away from him.

But he moves too fast, a flick of his wrist that brings the crossguard close enough to redden the rise of her knuckles, and her saber is ripped from her hand, spinning end over end, across the room.

He takes his black hilt in both hands and raises the crackling lazerline high over his head. Rey feels the Dark Side clawing at him, tearing at his arms, urging him to strike.

“Kylo.”

It's Artane who calls out, as the jagged red blade hovers in the air above her.

But he needn't have said anything because, as fast as he called it to him, Ben pulls the Darkness back. It dissipates like a vapour and Rey's mouth falls open, watching his contorted face settle to a steady, exhausted calm.

He _used_ it, Rey thinks, and then he _let it go_. More than that, the power of it, though it manifested differently in him, felt so familiar to her. As familiar as her own.

Ben deactivates his saber and drops to one knee in front of her. Rey presses both hands into the mat with a strangled sob, knowing what will come next. He leans forward, over her.

“Join me, Rey,” he says, his expression so intense she could not look away even if she had wanted to. And then a whisper, low enough that none of the Knights could have heard it.

“Stay with me.”

His jaw is clenched tight and his mind is secured from her again so she cannot hear his thoughts. She doesn't need to. What he wants to say is written all over his face, even if he cannot bring himself to say it. Words that have echoed in her head for as long as she can remember.

_Please don't leave me alone_.

And it's agony, seeing him like this, vulnerable and apprehensive and still so determined. It makes her insides twist and the last of the training weapons, those that had not been flung to the floor during their fight, begin to rattle in their slots. Her breath is light and catching and Rey feels the edge of something wild threatening to overpower her but she can't tell if it's anger or despair or something darker, something hot and suffocating.

Ben doesn't take his eyes off her as he stands and moves back to the middle of the room. He clips his weapon to his belt and waits with his hands clasped behind him. He is unsteady on his feet, swaying gently with fatigue, and the tang of blood and sweat fills the air. There is something final about this, something heavy settling around her.

The Knights stiffen. They reach out to brush energies with each other. They are helping each other to harden their focus, to force down any compassion or mercy. They are readying themselves for her response.

Rey drags herself to her feet and the Knights come around her, hemming her in. They walk her forward toward the Master of the Knights of Ren. When she is within arm's reach of him, they stop. The Knight she does not know, Vakiss, places a hand on her shoulder, gently urging her to her knees.

She resists.

When Ben's eyes flick from hers to the Knight with the barest frown, the pressure on her shoulder is immediately released.

Rey watches the rise and fall of his chest, that massive expanse that she has left her mark in. She stands before him, weaponless, and the Knights pull back a step each.

Ben watches her for a long moment.

“I gave you a choice, Rey. Kill me or join me. You cannot kill me, any more than I can you.”

She looks away and the silence stretches out between them, solid and dangerous. Eventually, she hears him huff out a long, frustrated breath.

“The hard way, then,” he says, almost to himself and she looks at him again. There is the tremor of reluctance in his voice and the Knights tension ratchets up, as if they can tell what he is about to do next.

Rey is transfixed, wondering what punishment, what torture he will dole out for her refusal to speak.

“Give her a weapon,” Ben orders, over her shoulder, “a staff.”

He moves back and widens his stance as a blaster-axe lands at her feet. Ben is within its reach, close enough to hear his steady breath, to see his hands, held tight by his side.

The Knights are frozen in place and it takes Rey a moment to realise that Ben is holding them still. There is a swirl of his energy circling the room. None of it is focused on her but he is watching her intently and his lips are moving, doubt or determination flickering but she is not sure which. The air shudders with the crazed energy of the Knights, their struggle to break free of their Master's iron grip, to stop this madness they see before them. To save him.

The axe is in her hand. She has called it without meaning to.

Ben doesn't move a muscle.

“Join me or kill me, Rey.”

She raises the weapon and he closes his eyes, takes a long, slow breath.

“I know what I have to do,” she whispers, because she is vindictive, and because she wants so desperately to believe that she can end all of this and return victorious to the Resistance.

His face clears as if he is meditating and he is so beautiful that her breath catches. He hears it. His head cocks to the side and she feels him probe the Bond, testing, waiting for her. She still can't feel any of his emotions but he must feel hers. There is no way that her urge to touch him can't be felt by every Force-User in this Temple.

She roars and raises the staff above her head. One of the Knight's grunts in alarm and Ben's hand tightens, struggling to keep them still. But none of his Force energy even glances her. She is free to do as she pleases.

She brings the axe down in a lethal arc. The muscles of her arms scream at the sudden movement. She is wailing and it sounds desperate, filled with rage, and fear, and yearning, and -

defeat.

The blade stops at his neck, a millimetre from his skin, opening a tiny split that seeps slow beads of his blood. Her scream dies in a tight, strangled sound of frustration as she pulls the weapon back.

Ben opens his eyes and expels a quick, relieved breath through a rounded mouth.

She swings again and lets the axe fly toward a console on the wall behind him. It tears through the metal and wires in a shower of sparks. Rey calls it back and sends it shooting against the wall on his other side. The speed of the weapon moves his hair as it passes him. As she calls the axe back to her again, he plucks it from the air and looks at it, calm, before dropping it to the floor.

Rey's shoulders slump forward and her legs give beneath her. He catches her arms, holds her by the elbows, using the Force to steady them both. She lets her forehead thump against his chest, rests it there. There are tears now and she thinks that she is always crying with him.

And as always, physical touch makes the bond swell and shimmer. He could pierce the paper-thin mesh she'd strung up, but she feels him hover at the edges, pressing gently. Asking. She looks up to see him frowning at some vague distant point beyond her.

“I'm sorry, Rey, but you have to say it.”

She nods her assent and Ben looks like he's in pain, like he wants to run from the room.

“Out loud... it has to be out loud... please.”

She pulls out of his grip, stands taller than she thought could and, unexpectedly, she knows what she needs. It comes to her out of nowhere, so fast that Rey wonders if Ben has somehow passed the idea to her like an olive branch, though his defences are still rock-solid.

“You need to destroy it,” she tells him, “Destroy Snoke's Holocron and I'll join you. No part of that thing can be allowed to exist.”

“That's it? That's your only demand?”

With a jolt, Rey catches the ghost of a tired smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He is still unfocused, not looking at her, at anything.

“For now,” she tells him with an angry edge to her voice that brings his attention to her at once.

He nods and Rey resists the urge to tell him that he must _say it_ , but only barely. Ben must sense her suppressed jibe because he raises an eyebrow and confirms it, out loud.

“I'll destroy it. You can watch me, if you like.”

“Then, I agree to join you.”

Nothing about his physical appearance changes. He doesn't move an inch but, all the same, Ben seems to slump in relief. The Knights are released and his energy snaps back to him, she feels the dull twang of it as it passes around her. She flinches, certain that one of them will move forward, end her the way he hasn't.

Instead, they leave, quietly. The room is silent around them.

He drops then. He crashes heavily to his knees and Rey is so surprised by it that she falls beside him instantly, only barely stopping herself from reaching out to tilt his chin toward her.

There is that surreal quality that comes with her exhaustion and his nearness and Rey is looking at their hands, inches apart, pressed into the shredded mat.

“I wish.. _.”_

He is speaking to the floor in front of her knees and his voice is faded, drained. Broken. 

“What do you wish for, Ben?”

Her hand moves closer to his, her little finger next to his thumb, so close she can feel the heat of his skin. 

“I wish I could stop. I'm so tired.” 

That is not what he was thinking, she knows it. 

There is a hard wall around him, Rey can't see a single stray thought but she can't bring herself to push. She doesn't want to push. She wants to give him something. She wants to hand something over without a fight, because he needs it, and because he would risk decapitation just to have her stay with him, and because they have both had to fight their whole lives for so little in return, and because she is not like Skywalker or Snoke. 

“When I lived on Jakku, I was never afraid of the dark. It was the sun that could kill you.”

Her hand moves, covers his. His skin is feverishly warm. She feels the bones of his knuckles and the soft the dips between. The thrum of their energy turns gentle at their touch, like a sigh. 

“The dark was quiet... peaceful.”

Now she is brave, now she is strong. He looks up at her and in his eyes, she sees a different kind of battle is being waged, but he holds her gaze.

“There were things in the dark that could hurt me, many things that wanted to. But in the dark, I could hide from them. I could be safe. I never knew it was something to be feared, until you.”

He releases like a coil and moves fast toward her. One hand cups her face. The other circles her back, holds her straight. His leg is bent over hers. She is surrounded, enveloped by him. The tendrils of darkness inside her warp at his touch. He could call them to him. They would make him stronger. He will show her how to do that. He will show her whatever she asks to see.

He touches his forehead to hers and they are breathing each others breath and he is saying something. It sounds like _Please,_ or maybe it's her name, but all their walls are gone so she can't tell anymore if he is really speaking or if she is just feeling these words from him.

She pushes into his mind, much harder than she meant, so hard he jerks against her. But he doesn't hold her back. He relaxes instead.

The emotion she feels through the haze of his exhaustion brings her arms up off the floor. She grips behind his elbows and steadies herself.

There is so much desire, hot and slick and powerful. There is guilt, a wish that he could make himself into what she needs him to be. And there, right there in the centre of him, like the kernel of a fruit, is hope. Hope that she feels the same as he does, though both of them are too afraid to put a name to this emotion.

It makes him want to lift her from the room and place her somewhere dark and quiet, away from all this, and lie next to her, wrap his arms around her and feel the length of her body against his. He wants to see the tension melt from her shoulders, to see her smile, to see her head tip back and hear her make breathy sounds with an open mouth.

She is making these sounds now.

Before she can think, before she can tie herself back into the knots she has been in for months, she moves.

She slides her hands up his arms and over his shoulders and brings her mouth slowly to his, giving him time to pull back, to stop her.

But Ben doesn't stop her. He has never lied to her about wanting this. It's Rey that's been lying and she can't anymore.

At first, he doesn't move. Rey kisses the corner of his open mouth, the bow of his upper lip, she runs the very tip of her tongue along his full lower lip but he holds still until she realises what he is waiting for.

She nods and pulls him through the bond until he can see what she is feeling. That same mix of fear and wanting and that tender curl of something so fragile she can barely look at it. It makes her want to heal the cut on his thigh, to trace her hand in gentle patterns over his skin, to yield and open to him and hear him sigh against her skin.

He kisses her, soft and slow.

It's like melting, it's like dreaming, like that moment when a hyperdrive cuts out, right before freefall begins.

His tongue slides against hers and she tastes salt and blood and something faintly minty and she wants more.

“Rey,” he says, rising up over her, “Come with me.”

He doesn't have to hold out his hand, she has already entwined her fingers with his and keeps them there as he curls his arm around her shoulders and leads her from the training room, back toward his quarters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Motherf*cking FINALLY!  
> That took about fifteen chapters longer than I had anticipated...
> 
>  **Can't wait for the imminent smut section?**  
> [Here's one I made earlier!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24003568)  
> It's not from this story - it's a one-shot, based on a brilliant prompt by RedRoseWhite in our May the 4th Exchange, but please feel free to pop on over and check out the pure filth. 
> 
> In the same exchange, RedRoseWhite took my _incredibly dull and boring prompt_ and made something hysterical and sweet with a gut-punch moment (Chewie threatens Ben, oopmh!) that she is so good at creating, which you can read [Here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24007651)
> 
> I've changed the format a bit in this chapter based on the very generous advice of the lovely Dinkerinos.  
> Then, I snooped their profile (like some kind of weird author-stalker) and came across [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24002593) amazing fic, which I highly recommend. It's a beautiful, sexy, compelling mermaid/reylo crossover and I've read it about four times now and it is exquisite. 
> 
> Once again, thank you so much to everyone who has left comments and kudos on this fic. I can't fully explain the surge of excitement I get when I see a new comment and I so love hearing how people react to this crazy, random trash-puddle.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	24. Rominaria Flower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baum-chika-wah-wah...  
> *snorts and covers a very red face*

“Close your eyes, Rey,” he tells her, “We have time. You need to sleep.”

This is true. She is so tired she sees white at the edges of her vision, though the room is pitch black in the oppressive way only underground quarters can be. She closes her eyes, curls against his chest, pressing her cheek there and listening hard to the pounding beneath.

Every heated beat brings a memory, an onslaught of sensory overload that pulses between her legs.

_**Thump** _ _..._

Ben carefully removing her arms wraps with a look of intense concentration. Their boots are lying haphazardly on the floor of the fresher, where he had thrown them without looking. He is silent until he unclips her belt and lets it fall to the floor with the coils of fabric.

“Arms.”

He says it quietly, with a slight upward jerk of his chin. Rey doesn't miss the hungry look he directs at her mouth when he says it. She lifts her hands high so he can slide her training top up over her head.

_**Thump**_...

“You first?” she asks on an exhale.

He had unwrapped her breastband so slowly that her knees feel weak. She stands, bared to the waist, with her hands covering his as they splay over her hips. Despite everything she has faced in her short life, Jakku, Starkiller, Snoke, being naked in front of Ben is the most frightened she has ever been. She asks him to strip first, the coward's option.

“No,” he answers with a slow smile. Her mouth falls open in surprise but there is a resounding thrill deep in her belly that stops her from arguing further.

He lowers himself to his knees and leans in to kiss each of her hands. The first kiss whisps along the small crossguard burn and she draws in a short breath through her nose. He looks up through sweat-dampened hair, apologetic, and turns away to kiss her other hand.

“Beautiful,” he whispers into her fingers, “When you fight, when you laugh, when you are afraid, when you're angry,” he frowns, like he's confused, “Always so beautiful.”

She lets her hands fall by her sides and Ben brings his mouth to her stomach, kissing just above her navel, as he hooks his thumbs under the stretchy material and slips her training pants down.

_**Thump, Thump** _ **...**

Ben steps back from her and pulls off his clothes, precise and methodical. Then he stands with his hands by his sides, no hint of embarrassment or self-consciousness, not even a tinge of pride in the sculpted body he displays for her or the fully erect cock that bobs free of his pants. He views his body as a weapon, its merit based solely on its ability. For him, this part is easy.

But he does like Rey's immediate reaction to seeing him naked, the throb in her centre that is so acute it makes him wince, the shocked flood of heat to her cheeks as she studies him. She feels Ben's pleasure in that, self-satisfaction even. He waits until she dips down to remove her underwear, trying desperately to emulate his self-confidence, failing. After a long moment, where his eyes can't seem to settle on any one part of her for more than a second, he turns away to run the complex-looking shower.

_**Thump, Thump...** _

His hand is slick with water and he presses his wet palm to the burn on her ribs. She is too depleted to heal either of them. The sting of treatment makes her jump and he smiles against her mouth.

“There's Bacta oil in the water,” Rey mumbles her surprise against his lips.

“There's Rominaria flower essence in there too,” he is still smiling, she can feel it, “I thought you might like the scent.”

There it is, that hint of shyness that hadn't been there before, a sweetness she can always sense under the surface but that is so rarely held to the light.

“I do,” she tells him and he pulls her gently with him into the flow of water.

_**Thump, Thump Thump**_...

The water stings and soothes and Ben's hands slide over her back and ribs and arms, massaging the Bacta into her skin in gentle circles. Rey can feel where he is hard, pressing against her stomach but he stops her hands when she reaches for it, curious and hot. He kisses her neck instead and his cock lifts away from her skin and drops back against it at the whimper that elicits from her.

When he slides his hand between their bodies to cup her breast, his thumb circles her nipple, brushing over the pebbled point and Rey lets her head drop back with a breathy moan she has never made before. She pushes him back, making space between them so she can see what she is doing as she smoothes the Bacta over his body. He watches her every move and Rey takes note of all the places where her touch makes his breath catch or shudder. There are many. She avoids the place that is screaming for touch the most, skirting it as she bends to close the wound in his thigh that is turning the water an alarming shade of red.

There is a swathe of uncontrolled feeling from Ben, pleasure and pain all rolled together in a confusing swell as she works. He reigns in it, bit by bit, and Rey can feel some doubt or reservation at the edge of his mind but she can't tell exactly what it is.

She is drawn to him though, this unfamiliar part of him, and her face drifts closer as she uses the last of her reserves to help the Bacta knit his skin together. By the time the wound is closed, if she darted out her tongue, she could taste him, run her lips along that vein-

He pulls her up fast, switches off the water with tense fingers, and lifts her from the shower.

_**Thump, Thump, Thump**_...

The glow panels in his room are set so low Rey can barely see him. He sits, slowly, and her knees sink into the mattress on either side of him. He is achingly hard between them, pressed between their slick skin. He seems reluctant to move, even an inch.

_Ben, I want..._

Rey lets her head fall into the crook of his shoulder, uncertain. She sends him an image she had plucked from him during their fight: Her back pressed to his chest, his arms around her. It's the most she can bring herself to say. His shoulders tense further.

_Whatever you want, Rey, I'll give it to you._

He grips her and glides backwards on the bed. He has one arm around her waist, steadying her. His lap is beneath her, all of her moving with him until he twists and she is lying beside him. She rests her head on his arm, her forehead just beneath his chin. The icy herb smell of Bacta is strong but Rey won't move away, even to breathe. There are so many places they are touching and she can feel all of them burning.

This is not exactly the image Ben gave her, the image she fed back to him. They are face to face, but Rey likes this better. She runs her finger over the scar she made on his broad chest and sighs at what that does to him.

He puts his hand over hers, stills it.

_Safe_.

She is so warm. His other hand is on her back. It runs the length of her side, slick with Bacta oil. Rey is _warm._ She is safe. She can close her eyes and let her mind drift. She does not have to stay vigilant, be ready to run or fight. She is safe. With him. Vaguely, Rey is aware that Ben is sending her this feeling, that he wants her to succumb to it but there is no ulterior motive behind it. It's the same as the wave of calm she sent to him before she healed him. He justs wants her to feel protected. She doesn't remember ever feeling this before. Not on Jakku, not with the Resistance. Not ever. Safe is not a concept that was ever real to her. And now here it is. In the arms of her enemy.

He sighs.

“Close your eyes, Rey,” he tells her, “We have time. You need sleep.”

_thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump_

She blinks and knows he can feel the sweep of her eyelashes against the sensitive skin of his inner arm. She has caught the edge of his thoughts again, though Ben is actively trying to keep quiet without closing himself off completely. There is that same reluctance and this time she sees what it is. He is afraid. This is Rey's first time and he wants it to be better. He wants for Rey to be well-fed, possibly tipsy, and _happy_ when this moment happens between them. He wants more for her than being battle-weary and sore, clinging to each other for comfort. There is an edge of sadness and doubt in him that pulls in Rey's chest.

“I don't want to sleep, Ben.” She had wanted it to sound seductive and low, but instead, it comes out as a scared whisper. Whatever he tries to say in return catches in his throat, a rough needy sound that he cuts off immediately, eyes squeezed closed.

There is a sudden flickering of his mind at the edges of hers. He is trying, desperately, to clamp it down, to pull it back to himself but she can feel the desire in him and she tugs at a strand of it. The images come like a current, vivid and hot, and Rey is reminded of how it feels to touch a live wire. It's just a sense of it that she gets, but enough to know that it's her in his head, her body perfectly conjured, her limbs around him, his mouth on her, her hands doing things they had never done, his mouth doing things she had never imagined.

Her fingers tighten in his hand and her legs squeeze together at the rush of his thoughts.

Sharp and sudden, there is a blank wall where his mind had come undone, hard and black and solid enough to touch. He meant what he said. Whatever his body tells her, he wants her to feel safe and protected and, to him, that means giving her the sleep her body needs, instead of giving in to what he wants to do instead. He is filled with determination, purpose.

She breathes into his skin, smiling. The thud of his heart is fast, erratic.

Before she can stop herself, she sweeps the wall where those images had come from.

“Sleep,” he tells her, and his voice is strained.

When she moves her body to look up at him, his cock presses hard against her belly and he makes a noise that sounds like pain. His whole body stiffens.

“Rey.” Her name in his mouth is a warning, but it's also a plea.

He's not entirely wrong. There is still a small part of her that does not want to see, doesn't want to hear the sounds she's made in his mind. She is afraid of the things he imagines doing.

“Show me again,” she says.

The wall cracks and shakes and then he lets it go.

It's a wave and she stiffens against it. Ben's arms tighten around her. Images and emotions, crash into her, so fast she finds it hard to focus on any of them. Flashes of her splayed beneath him, writhing, _tender and protective_ , Ben beneath her as she undulates above him, _white-hot desire_ , his fingers over her open mouth, Rey on her knees before him, _guilt_ and _want_ , her hands reaching down to push into his hair, her fingers wrapped around him, _aching need_ , her mouth...

Rey makes a noise like the one she hears herself make in his mind.

The throbbing of her body is near painful now and she locks onto the thoughts and feelings that slide over her, the hunger he feels is close to agony, vying with the urge to give her more than this, the feeling like he does not deserve this, how hard it is for him to pull back, how he feels like he's teetering on the edge of something and he cannot allow himself to fall unless she is with him.

“Rey. Please... Sleep,” he whispers into her hair, where he had pressed his mouth as if to quieten himself.

The word is all his pain and all his need rolled into one syllable. Rey knows exactly what to say in response.

“No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it turns out, it's INCREDIBLY hard to write sex scenes (bwahaha - 'hard'), hence the delayed update and the split chapter. 
> 
> I tried to do this weird format thing with the heartbeat, apologies if it reads odd, I was trying to be all writerly. :-) 
> 
> I've re-written this so many times, and even got help from the amazeballs RedRoseWhite, who has a deadly new fic out [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24235585/chapters/58394794) BTW, but even with all that, writing is hard, and I'm still not happy with the second part of this (you know, the actual sex part) so I'm gonna post when I've implemented all her brilliant advice. 
> 
> My goal is to do some of the _detailed research_ my husband keeps suggesting (hehehe) and try to have the next part up this week.
> 
> Thanks again to the wonderful [RedRoseWhite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedRoseWhite) for sharing her writing knowledge with this floundering mess. You're the best!
> 
> As always, thank you everyone who's reading and those who take the time to comment or leave kudo's. I can't express how much I love seeing what people think and soaking up the advice. 
> 
> Oh, and I added to the chapter count again because I am super slow at getting to the point. SORRY!!


	25. You're enough

He needs to stop this. He should never have started it.

He knew what he was doing, bringing her here. But he could hardly take her back to her rooms, with their blown doors and overturned bed where Cabith had searched for her. But now she is here, in his bed, and he has touched almost every part of her body and he cannot seem to stop touching her now. She had healed the wound in his thigh as her free hand circled the jut of his hip and he'd thought he'd lose it right there in the shower. She must be able to feel his desperation. There are so many things he has done wrong. She deserves better than this, not this broken need to soothe them both, not this simple ache to belong to her. 

_Not enough, not enough, not enough._

Rey surges up to kiss him, tugging him to her.

“It's enough, Ben,” she murmurs into his mouth but that’s not what she means because he hears her, louder, through the Bond.

_You’re enough._

He will do anything for this woman. His hand slides down her side and he sends her an image of what he wants.

_Let me._

He blinks when she nods her assent. He must hesitate too long because Rey takes his wrist and draws his arm between them. She is biting her lip when their eyes meet, apprehension covered with bravado.

He nudges her back into the pillows, kissing her neck as his hand slides over her tight stomach and between her legs. Soft, sparse hair wisps against his fingers and, at first, he can't do anything but press his palm against her, covering her whole sex, while he tries to regain some control.

She arches, her lower back lifting from the sheets, pushing against him with a tight keening sound. Now there is no thought, no hope of pulling back, no way of doing anything but this. He slips between her delicate folds, finding her hot and slick, and nuzzles her cheekbone with his nose when she cries out. Her mind is bucking, the sensation almost too much for her. He won't stop though, he's not sure he if could now. She is so wet his fingers slide easily, over and over, and he wants to taste her there, to run his tongue along her, to feel her come against his mouth.

Rey is holding his shoulder, pressing her fingers at the muscle beneath. Her other arm is in his sheets, twisting. Her body moves in time with his fingers. She lets out little gasps that he wants to hear again and again.

Ben has forgotten himself, forgotten anything outside of her face, the way her body shakes, the way her hand pulls from the sheet to trace the side of his mouth. He shifts higher and angles until his forefinger is pressing into her, as slowly as his can. He meets such resistance that he almost pulls back but Rey is lifting up and crying out, her anticipation speeding her breath until they are mere puffs of air at his shoulder. His mind goes blank again. There is nothing but driving Rey higher, nothing but making her feel more, and more. He adds a second finger, curling them until he finds the spot he is looking for. She is so tight, hot and wet, and so blindingly good that his hips push against her side, pulsing into her hip. He can't focus, can't think straight. He is only instinct now. He slides his thumb over her while his fingers shift inside her. He could do this forever, pull these involuntary sounds until there is nothing more than the top of her breath, held tight until she releases it on a pitched exhale. Rey's body tightens impossibly around him. He can feel the fluttering inside her, against the length of his fingers. He moves faster in response, increases the pressure a fraction more.

She grasps the back of his neck and pulls back to look at him. Her eyes are wide and shocked. There is a tremble of fear at the core of her mind. 

“Ben, Ben, _Ben-_ ”

He sees the image: Rey, teetering at the highest point, about to fall, frightened of what will happen next. He pushes hard into her with everything he has, his fingers, his hips, the palm of his hand at her neck. Ben nuzzles his cheek against hers, soothing her, holding her against him as he tempers the motion of his thumb to heavy languid circles and takes her over the edge, slow and steady and as long as he can make it last. 

_I’m here. I have you. Let go._

* * * * *

Rey is soaring, swooping low and shooting skyward all at once.

She presses her face to his chest and all those small soft sounds she had been making come together, fast and hard, and then long and loose. She can't stop, can't hold herself back and Ben's mind is soaking up her noises, urging her for more. There are stars blazing and bursting inside her, so vivid they brighten the room as he slows his fingers, drawing this out as much as he can. He moves gently against her until she is shaking, bucking, squeezing her thighs together.

When it's too much, Ben lays back, tucks her into his side, letting her come down while keeping as much of her against him as he can. He reaches the hand that was inside her behind his head and stares at the ceiling while he sends her thought after thought: her face, how she felt to him, hot and slick beneath his fingertips, his intense satisfaction watching her come, his aching need to do this again, to do nothing but this. 

His thoughts get louder when she kisses his chest. The flame of them in her mind makes hr shudder, want to move. When she opens her mouth and swirls her tongue against his nipple, his thoughts get louder still, more vivid than before. There is a taste in her mouth when she connects with him. It’s her taste. It's overwhelming, feeling everything that he feels, how each small movement produces a reaction in him, and having that reaction affect her. It's dizzying. She wonders if Ben feels the same and knows he does from the way his fingers press into her back in response.

She shifts onto her elbow until she is above him, moves her leg until her top knee rests between his. Then his thoughts focus, quieten. She sees the image in his mind and watches him fold it back into himself like he is afraid she feels pressure. But Rey doesn't feel anything outside of the warmth of him, the strength of his arm against her back, the heft of muscle beneath her palm. The way he holds back all his formidable power and allows her full control, yielding to her. She copies the image Ben sent her without hesitation, sliding across him until she straddles his stomach and he is groaning into her mouth.

He puts his hands on her thighs, presses to move her lower but does not push. He _won't_ push her.

He has more experience than her, lots more. He isn't thinking of it but it's there, informing his thoughts the same way his force training does. She shoves that thought away and shuffles backwards over him until she can feel the length of him beneath her. He lifts his head and upper back off the bed to keep kissing her and it's frantic now, like he wants to taste every part of her.

She presses down on his pelvis and Ben breaks away to suck in air through gritted teeth before bringing his lips to her neck, a tender spot just below her jaw. The angle changes as he sits upright and she tilts her hips to raise and lower herself, sliding along the thick, hard base. As she fights the urge to go faster, Ben’s thoughts become tense and thick. He is holding them back from her again and she has to reach for them, to see what he wants her to do, to see what makes him feel good. He shakes his head against her neck and when he looks up at her, he is smiling.

“All of it, Rey,” he says, “all of it feels good.”

His hand slides from her back to cover her breast and he closes his eyes, rests his head against her collarbone. Her hips work on their own, instinctive and greedy. There are the sparks again, the feeling of free-fall, and the sudden loop of Ben's mind anchoring her and his body sending her high.

He is taut beneath her, holding steady as she moves. He kisses her clavicle, hunches over to trace a line down her chest and take her nipple into his mouth. He sucks, hard, and a line of fire races straight to her core. Rey _jerks_ , her fingers pressing hard into his shoulder. Her hips grind and _there_ is the sound he likes so much, coming from her without warning, as if he has pulled it from her.

His arm tightens around her and he shows her what he is about to do, but doesn't move until he feels her nod again. Then, he lifts her and turns, spins until the bed is beneath her and Ben is over her, and Rey's legs have come up around his hips, squeezing. He knows what comes next and for a moment, she wonders how he learned this, who else has seen him like this. The thought feels cold and she shakes her head to rid herself of it. 

Ben stops moving, stills entirely, raises up to look at her face and she shifts a little at the scrutiny, knowing he’d caught the stray thought.

“I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want you,” he tells her, looking right at her with that intense stare of his. He doesn’t say it out loud, but she hears it as if he’d whispered it. 

_I never will_.

Rey can’t answer, can’t think. She can feel the sting of tears and she arches her pelvis toward him. There is a part of his mind that swells in pleasure. She can feel him lock the moment away as he kisses her. He's cataloguing it, saving it like the rations she used to store in her room, like he is afraid he will need these memories later, for survival.

Then his fingers are between her legs, sliding against her. He bends down over her until he is breathing hard next to her ear. He finds that spot like a lit flare that makes her cry out and she tries to bring her knees together. It's too much, she can't take it. Ben stops her, moves her knees apart to give himself room, then glides over the spot again. It's like fire. Rey's breath comes hard and fast.

All at once, the feeling softens, morphs into something bigger than she'd felt before. Her back is arching off the bed. His lips are on her neck and she tries to kiss the skin behind his ear but she can't focus on anything but this feeling. Her legs are shaking with it and Ben moves faster in response.

_You're sure? Rey, be sure. Please be sure._

_Yes. Yes. Yes._

He shifts, quickly. Rey can hear the rasp of his knees sliding over the sheets and then he is there, nudging against her, lined up. His fingers are still moving over her. There is so much sensation all at once that she twists her neck, craning her face away from him. Ben holds still again and she closes her eyes, breathes deep and relaxes her body as much as she can. He is anxious above her, hovering at the edge of her thoughts, strained and terrified of hurting her.

“I’m alright,” she tells him, calm, “I want this, Ben. Please.”

He moves slowly. There is resistance and he is inching against it, staring at her furrowed brow, watching her as she slips into a meditative breath. His energy is bow-string tight and his mind is focused to a single point. Rey can almost hear the strain he is under not to push harder.

She looks down between their bodies. She feels stretched tight around him and there is so much more of him. Rey lets out a breath. He is so big. It won't fit. Ben shakes his head with another smile and slides his fingers faster over her until she moans. The heat spreads through her. Her legs tighten and she hears the sounds she makes from far away.

He moves again, pushing his hips closer and her breath comes heavy and fast. Her hands reach high, fingers curling into his hair. The tension in his shoulders makes him shake and she eases her palms along his back. He inches forward and slides his fingers until, finally, he is fully inside her. He stays still and breathes hard against her cheek, his muscles quivering in strain.

_Are you ok?_

_Yes._ _Are you?_

_Rey,_ _I need to move... Fuck, you feel too… I need to..._

She kisses him and rocks her hips. The motion moves him inside her and they both groan. Ben pulls back and thrusts, faster this time. His hand cradles her neck. He watches her and pulls back again to push deeper. Through the Bond, she sees her own eyes widen as he moves, an image he tucks away and stores like it's precious and her heart tugs in response.

He is gentle, rhythmic and steady, as he thrums with need, watching her for any sign of distress. She runs her hand along his face.

_You're so beautiful._

He smiles and her eyes flit to his dimples. She sends him a thread of what it makes her feel when he smiles like that. He grasps it and pulls without thinking. A flood of Rey's feelings for him come in its wake and she doesn't even try to hold them back. Immediately, his hips buck so hard that his pelvis slams against her. The noise that comes from both of them is feral and harsh. Every muscle in his body goes rigid to keep still. He winces at her, afraid he has hurt her.

_Ben... Do that again_.

He brings his forehead to hers, moans a low, short sound. His hips draw back and push into her, deep and fast. She can feel the ridges of him as he moves and this time, Ben doesn't hold back. He crashes into her. She feels him hit that deep spot over and over till her body is ringing with it. His mind is swooping and swirling, like a whirlwind, all control lost. He is talking into the bond but it's a jumble of incoherent words. Her name and how she feels, sheathed tight around him, and how good this is for him and how much he wants. And, _Mine._ Over and over again, _Mine._

Rey wraps her legs around him and Ben rears back so her hands drop from his shoulders to his elbows. His eyes are trained on her and he brings his fingers to that spot, not breaking his rhythm. She keens and grips the bicep of the arm he is leaning on. Her other hand reaches out and fists in the sheets.

A second wave of shivers through her and this time, when she clenches around him, he cries out and breaks the flow of his thrusts, his body stuttering and shaking. He goes rigid and then his hand grasps her hip, tilting her so she comes against him with every thrust. He slams himself into her with sharp, wild shoves. He makes a rough noise with each movement. They are drowned by her own fierce cries. His fingers tighten and then he snarls, holds his breath, tight, and pumps again.

Rey feels him streaking inside her, leaving a wetness that is not hers. She pulls him, urging him close until he slows, gentles, and the hand at her hip is soothing where he'd gripped her. He kisses her, breathing harsh and heavy into her mouth and onto her cheek and neck. She responds with sounds she knows he likes, sounds she can't stop making now.

Eventually, Ben moves to her side, pulls her against him, and Rey wraps herself around him. She feels the thought as it leaves him. He'd moved her so she would feel protected and safe next to him but her arms have the same effect on him. He dips his face to kiss the top of her head as their breathing slows.

She wants to stay awake. She really does. But her body is spent, liquid and useless and his beating heart in her ear is lulling her.

_Sleep, sweetheart_.

Her heart pulls at the endearment and then beats faster but she is too far gone to open her eyes. The heat of his body is soothing. Her fingers curl against his chest, over and over and he sends her a thread of the sensation that is so bright, her dreams will glimmer with it.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the chapter I wanted. 
> 
> I tried so hard. But smut is WAY harder than you think it will be.
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading!


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